Taking the Reins

by Dayle Campbell Gaetz

While she set the table, Katherine strained to hear, but their voices were too low. When they came inside, none of their expressions gave anything away. George arrived, shaking his hands, wet from washing at the bucket outside. He sat with the men while Mother fetched the tea pot.

  Katherine carried a jar of blackberry jam and a plate piled high with freshly baked scones. As she leaned over to place the plate on the table, she took the opportunity to glance sideways at her father. He turned to her, smiling as though all his cares had been lifted from his shoulders. “Mr. Roberts here has made us a proposal,” he said. “It involves you.”

  Katherine glanced at Mr. Roberts, then quickly back to Father as if she couldn’t wait to hear their news. She completely forgot the large plate in her hand until it began tipping in Mr. Roberts’ direction. Before she could right it, a scone flew off and landed on his lap.

  “Why, thank you Miss Harris.” He placed the fat scone on his plate. “I believe I will have one. They smell delicious.”

  Her father looked puzzled. “Are you quite all right, Katherine?”

  “I’m fine.” She sat down heavily. She must not laugh.

  “Oh Katherine,” Mother said, “just wait until we tell you. This is such an excellent opportunity for all of us.”

  “All of us?”

  “Yes.” Father pointed a jam-covered knife in her direction. “Katherine, how would you like to go to school in Victoria for the winter?”

  “School?” She avoided looking at Mr. Roberts for fear she would give away too much of their plans. They had agreed to lead Father to believe school was his idea alone. She did not need to feign surprise though, because she was genuinely amazed that everything fell together so smoothly. “But doesn’t school cost money?”

  “We won’t have enough money for an expensive private school. However, after the sale of Nugget and with...but we’ll let Mr. Roberts explain,” Mother said.

  Mr. Roberts sipped his tea, rubbed his hands together, and began. “For some time now I have been wanting to visit my brother and his wife on their plantation in Jamaica and meet my little niece, Rose. I shall have more than enough money for my passage after I sell my horses in Victoria. However, I need someone competent to run my store while I’m gone. Until you told me of your family’s background at the Landvoights’ earlier today, I could think of no one to handle the job reliably and not drive my store into bankruptcy in my absence.

  “As you explained, Miss Harris, your parents have vast experience of running a shop in England and your mother is rather adept at managing accounts. They assure me they would enjoy the company of being in a town this winter. At the same time they will make a profit from running the store, enough to pay for their keep and more besides.”

  He paused and looked directly at Katherine. “It was your father who suggested you might go to school.”

  “Really?” She turned to her father. He looked so pleased with himself, so happy to offer her this gift, that seeing him brought sudden tears to her eyes. “Oh Father, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Katherine,” he smiled at her, “this is a wonderful opportunity to improve your education and make new friends at the same time.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Thank you so much!” She couldn’t hold back then; she laughed out loud. She would escape the drudgery of life on this lonely farm. She would make new friends. She would learn new things.

  She turned to George. His shoulders were hunched over. His scone, buttered and slathered with blackberry jam, lay forgotten on his plate. He stared at a bright shaft of sunlight slanting through the open door.

  “George will need to remain on the farm, of course,” Father said. “There is work to finish and Duke and Genevieve to care for. But there should be enough food for one person, even your brother. And he has friends he can visit in Hope.”

  “Poor George,” Katherine said. “He’s the one who longed to get away on a great adventure, and now he’s the only one to be stuck on the farm.”

  “Yes,” Father agreed, “but come spring when Mr. Roberts returns, perhaps George can still travel up to the Cariboo if he chooses.”

  “I suppose I can hang on until spring,” George said, and bit into his scone.

  “Then it’s all settled.” Mother looked happier than she had since they left England. “I shall need to alter some frocks of...” She hesitated. She glanced at Katherine, her eyes filled with pain.

  Katherine nodded. Her throat tightened and she stared down at her hands. She knew exactly what her mother could not say. Mother would shorten some of Susan’s old frocks to fit Katherine.

  Mother cleared her throat. “Do you remember that nice widow, Mrs. Morris, whom we met in Victoria? She was considering taking in a boarder to help pay expenses now that she is on her own.”

  Katherine remembered her all right, but she wouldn’t call the woman nice. When Katherine had tried to ask her a question about Victoria, that woman had stuck her nose in the air and pretended not to hear. Then she had leaned toward Mother. “I have always believed children should be seen and not heard,” she said in a loud whisper. “Don’t you agree?”

  “I’ll write to her now,” Mother said, “so Mr. Roberts can carry the letter back with him. And naturally I shall accompany you to Victoria when the time comes.”

  “Of course,” Katherine agreed without enthusiasm. This was something she had not foreseen. Something bad to dampen the good. If attending school meant living with Mrs. Morris, could she manage? Could she keep her mouth shut and behave like a proper lady? Susan would have done so easily, Katherine knew that, but she wasn’t at all sure about herself. She slid her hand into her pocket, found the cloth bag, and clutched the gold nugget between her thumb and forefinger.

  She would learn to deal with Mrs. Morris, anything to get away from this farm and attend school.

  Emma

  Arrival of the Tynemouth – ... As a matter of course, we went aboard the steamer yesterday and had a good look at the lady passengers. They are mostly cleanly, pretty young women... Taken altogether, we are highly pleased with the appearance of the “invoice,” and believe they will give a good account of themselves in whatever station of life they may be called on to fill – even if they marry lucky bachelor miners from Cariboo.

  – The British Colonist, September 19, 1862

  4

  Even after all these months, Emma still hesitated every single morning, afraid to open her eyes for fear this new life of hers would turn out to be a dream. Snatched away like it never was real at all. For certain-sure she would wake up on the gritty floor of that squalid little room, curled up tight on a thin straw mattress, shivering with an awful cold that seeped into her very bones. Close beside Emma, her poor mam would be wasting away with disease while both of them longed for a crust of bread to ease their aching hunger.

  This morning, the memory of that closet-sized room was so strong Emma tasted the bitter grit of coal dust on her tongue and smelled the stink of open sewers in the streets of Manchester. She shivered in the chill of early morning. Was it true then? Was it out there, waiting for her the very second she opened her eyes? Was her beautiful dream over and the nightmare of real life returned?

  Emma half opened one eye, no more than a crack, but the room was solid black around her. She opened both eyes wide and listened in the darkness for the terrifying wheeze of her mother’s breathing. Nothing. Not a sound but the distant rumble of a steam engine.

  She allowed herself to hope now, allowed her body to curl into the big, soft mattress. The fear in her belly eased, the quick pounding of her heart slowed to normal. But a stink of coal still hung in the air, and an icy draft from the window made her shiver. She felt around in the dark, found the heavy Hudson’s Bay blanket crumpled beside her on the bed, pulled it over her head and snuggled deep beneath it.

  Emma smiled in her dark cocoon
because her dream was still alive. She was still here, in this brand new little city, safe in the Douglas family home, where there was always food enough for everyone, even a servant-girl such as herself. Wouldn’t she just love to lie here all morning, so deliciously warm now under her blanket? So content.

  So lazy! That annoying little voice piped up inside her head. Lie here all day and see if you don’t lose your job. Mrs. Douglas, kind as she is, would tell you to pack your things and be off. Could be she’d make you leave behind those dresses she altered to fit your tall, scrawny frame. Those few dresses Alice Douglas never did manage to smuggle out before she ran off and got herself married at seventeen.

  Lose this job and where will you go then?

  Emma stuck her head out from beneath the warm blanket. She would have no choice but to move in with Joe Bentley. Maybe Tall Joe really was her father, like he said, but that didn’t mean she had to move into his house. Emma knew all about fathers. Fathers made you follow a whole string of rules made only to suit their own selves. One mistake and they kicked you out the door and pretended they never did have a daughter at all.

  That’s what happened to her mam and would happen to her too if she didn’t watch out. Come spring, and all goes well, she still planned on going off with Tall Joe and his cousin to start that farm in British Columbia he was forever going on about. She told him she would, and that’s a fact. But she never did promise. If that Tall Joe started telling her what to do, she still might change her mind, and that’s for certain-sure. Beneath the blanket she touched her fingertips to her ring, felt the smooth roundness of it. Usually the ring brought comfort. Today it only made her angry.

  Emma tossed off the blanket and slid out of bed. The cold floor was a shock to her bare feet. A gust of icy wind blew through the wide open window and she hurried over to close it. She paused there, hands on the sash. High above the bare and twisted twigs of Garry oaks a million stars glittered in an ink-black sky. A fresh blast of frigid air chilled her face and arms.

  It was the stink that woke her up, the same thick, choking coal smell that filled every drop of air in Manchester. Not near so bad here, Emma thought. Here it was no more than a hint of coal dust on a clean, crisp breeze. The smell would be blowing this way from the harbour, with all the steamers anchored there. She slammed the window down and locked it tight.

  She felt around the dressing table, found her candle and lit it. Its pale glow chased all the shadows into dark corners of her attic bedroom. Emma dressed quickly by its light. So long as she kept her job with Governor and Mrs. Douglas, she would have a room of her own and never go hungry again.

  Emma wound her long, dark braids around the top of her head and pinned them in place. She paused to study her pale, narrow face in the tiny hand mirror. She would be fourteen years old next spring and didn’t need some father looking after her, as Tall Joe seemed to think. After Mam died, didn’t Emma stay clear of the workhouse, like she promised? Didn’t she spend three long months cooped up with all those other poor girls in the hold of a steamship with rats and cockroaches for company? If she survived all that, she positively could take care of her own-self in this wild little colony of Vancouver’s Island.

  Her candle cast an eerie light on the narrow stairway as Emma made her way down. With every step, her right hip ached and her knee felt as if a nail was being driven into it. Emma almost cried, the pain was that sharp. But worse, she was angry to feel it come back on her after all this time. It was the cold, she knew. Cold always made the pain worse.

  Emma limped into the huge kitchen, where she lit a lantern and stoked up the fire in the woodstove. Then she set about making breakfast. By the time Mrs. Douglas appeared, the kitchen was warm, hot porridge bubbled on the woodstove, and the pain had eased up. Emma’s limp was barely noticeable.

  By mid-afternoon, with the lunch dishes done and the house cleaned until it sparkled, Emma fetched a broom and hurried outside. She started sweeping the long, narrow verandah, where thousands of crisp brown oak leaves collected in great drifts. That cold dry wind still blew, rushing in from the northeast instead of Victoria’s more usual damp but mild southwest wind. Emma smiled as she tackled the leaves. Even if the cold bit at her nose and ears, it didn’t seep through to her bones. It didn’t make her shiver from the inside out, not like back in England, where she lived most days with her stomach so empty it ached and she hadn’t so much as a pair of shoes to warm her feet.

  She might still be thin, but not so half-starved as the day she stepped off that horrible ship. And now she had this lovely warm cloak Mrs. Douglas had given her to replace her thin shawl that never did keep out the wind or rain.

  Emma made a neat pile of leaves on the verandah, then swept them down, one step at a time, to the sidewalk. She had no sooner finished than an extra strong gust whipped into the pile and sent a cloud of leaves twisting and swirling back up to the verandah.

  “Well an’ wouldn’t you just know it.” Emma stopped working and leaned on the broom. “All that work an’ what’s the use?”

  “If you ask me, you’re fighting a losing battle here, my girl,” a voice said from close behind.

  Emma froze. She knew that voice. And just like him to come sneaking up, chuckling in his beard, and her talking to herself like she was daft. Emma whirled around. “Well, Tall Joe, an’ just wot’re you doin’ here, then? I gots work to do, don’t you know.”

  Tall Joe winced. Emma knew he hated her talking that way, using the language she picked up on the streets of Manchester, reminding him how much she and her mother had suffered while he was off having his great adventure in the new world. She watched his eyes cloud over with hurt, and her anger grew. There was something inside her, something uncontrollable that built up so strong and fast it had to be set loose or she would burst in two. She leaned on the broom and glared up at the man.

  Joseph Bentley might want her to call him Father, but the word would never pass her lips, not after more than thirteen years of believing he was dead. Still and all, “Mr. Bentley” sounded much too formal. So she had settled on “Tall Joe” whether he liked it or not. That was the name they called him up in the Cariboo where he found himself a fortune in gold. And that’s the name she would call him.

  “You shouldn’t ever come by when I’m workin’, Tall Joe,” she reminded him. “You’ll have me losin’ my job and be stuck with me day and night, like it or not.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that, Emma,” he said softly.

  “You can say that well enough, but we’d be sick of each other inside of a week.”

  “Not if you go to school.”

  Emma dropped the broom over a pitifully small pile of leaves and started up the steps, fists clenched tight at her sides. Anger pressed hard against her ribs, bursting to get out. Didn’t they have this argument two times before? The man had a problem with his head, and that’s for certain-sure. Couldn’t remember what a person told him or couldn’t understand it, one of the two. She would never go to school. Not now, not at her great age, and she’d never been to a real school in her whole entire life. Even little Martha Douglas, who attended school every day, could read better than her, and she only a child of eight.

  No, Emma did not need any of that. Them sitting at their little desks, laughing at her for being such a great, huge fool. She grabbed the front door handle.

  “Emma, please, I’m sorry. I know I promised not to bring it up again, but I still think you’d like to be able to read and write.” He paused, and when she didn’t answer but stood facing the door with her back straight and shoulders tense, he added more gently, “I’m simply trying to be a father to you.”

  She turned and glared down at him, eyes blazing. “An’ didn’t I tell you I don’t need takin’ care of?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I can take care of me own-self.”

  “Yes, you can.”


  “Then why do you keep after me about goin’ to school, I’d like to know?”

  Tall Joe studied her face, he rubbed a hand over his thick brown beard and his dark eyes looked up at Emma with a hint of pain in them. “It won’t happen again, I promise. Just let me know if you change your mind, will you?”

  Emma shrugged.

  “Meanwhile, I have something to show you. Something I know you’ll like.”

  She waited, but he said nothing more. “What is it then?”

  “Tomorrow is Wednesday, your half day off, correct?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll come by for you at one o’clock.”

  With that he swung around and strode down the straight sidewalk as fast as he could go without running.

  “An’ I never said I’d go with yer!” she called after him.

  He laughed, turned his head, and called over his shoulder, “You’re going to love it!”

  “Not if I can help it!”

  He laughed again.

  Emma limped back down the stairs to fetch the broom. And what was so funny, she’d like to know.

  At noon the following day, Emma picked up the large, steaming kettle that always sat on the woodstove. As she made tea she thought about Tall Joe. He said he’d fetch her at one o’clock but never bothered to ask if she had plans of her own. If she drank her tea and gobbled her food fast enough, she could be gone before he showed his face. Could be she’d take a stroll up to Beacon Hill or walk through town an’ gape in shop windows at all the expensive goods she never could afford in a lifetime of work.

  Mrs. Douglas walked into the kitchen with a wide smile on her broad and friendly face. Eight-year-old Martha and eleven-year-old James, the only two Douglas children at home since Alice eloped last year, spent their days at school, and Governor Douglas was always off doing whatever he did every day over at those Birdcages of his. So there were only the two of them at home come noon.