by Linda Little
“Ewan.”
“Aye.” My husband’s voice in the dark.
He did not halt his progress but led Billy into the stable where I knew he would be unburdening the poor beast and doling out its reward after the long journey. I pulled the soup up to the fire and warmed a loaf. Presently I heard his bustling outside the door and he entered clutching his pack. Such a magnificent thing to see him there, shuffling out of his heavy coat, hanging his fur cap on its peg, tucking his boots in behind the stove. I backed away afraid to approach lest the truth of his body be altered.
He sat at his place at the table, leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs in front of him, hooked his hands behind his head and began to speak. I served him soup with the fresh bread and butter and cheese and a pot of raspberry jam, then sat across from him in amazement at my near-gregarious husband. He spoke a full ten minutes about the Curry Point mill. He complained of the owner’s slovenly workmanship, how he was afraid the man would not follow his instructions precisely, leaving the mill no more than a limping, problem-riddled heap—a duster. He would leave the man to his instructions for now but he would have to go back to inspect the work and see what further could be done. The ratios had been all wrong—no wonder the thing couldn’t grind chalk—but the man could not understand anything put before him with a pencil. Ewan said he repaired the wheel, built a new spur, re-jigged and moved one of the stones, left intricate instructions for improvement of the dam.
I frowned. He must have worked day and night to accomplish so much. Finally he looked over his bowl at me. “Your milling went well, I suppose?”
“I’m glad to see you home. I had an awful armload trying to manage your work and mine as well.”
Ewan looked surprised. “But young MacCarron came?”
“Yes. But he doesn’t bake bread or roast a dinner or scrub clothes or churn butter.”
“But your milling went well?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. It’s our labour commends us to the Lord.” He fell silent then, and as far as I could tell, was happy.
CHAPTER
NINE
THE MORNING AFTER EWAN’S RETURN HE SET HIS DESK BACK against the wall of the mill where he liked it and sent the ink and nib back up the hill. He commented not one way or the other on my running of the business. Our lives reverted instantly to our old routines, so the entire experience shrank to little more than an unlikely adventure, an anomaly, an accident of life. In the evenings of the following week, when all his custom had been ground, Ewan would work through the problems of the Curry Point mill. Even though he knew the miller would take the quickest, simplest and most economical solution to his problems (and why wouldn’t he, the poor man?) Ewan continued to sketch and figure and tap his pencil for long hours. Although my experience was limited and Ewan’s answers to my questions laconic as always, even I could see that Ewan’s plans vastly outstripped the practical proposal. Having completed what was required he was now designing castles in the air. Deep in thought he regained that transported, utterly absorbed look I had seen on his face when he was designing and building his own mill. I envied him this. While I should have been pleased to see him so engaged with his work, in truth it deepened my sense of loneliness. Ewan was stark company at the best of times so it was not the loss of companionship I missed. I am ashamed to say that misery loves company. I longed to be so preoccupied, so drawn in. I longed for a greater meaning to my endless cycle of chores.
Cold closed in as we headed further down through December. Listlessness tugged at me. I had missed my cycle when Ewan was gone but how could I not? Working like a man. My days were peppered with bouts of felling morose and ill. As Christmastime approached I brought an armful of evergreen boughs into the house and urged myself towards some small effort for the season though I knew from experience that Ewan would work as usual on Christmas Day. I visited Nettle for the few supplies I would need to make the Christmas pudding which would elicit no comment.
At a single sharp bark from her dog, she stuck her head out the door of her shack and beckoned me in with a jerk of her chin making her look for all the world like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Ah, I thought, I will make a gingerbread house for Abby’s children.
“A bag of hard candy and a bag of gumdrops, Nettle,” I said, and remembered to leave an extra tip for Nettle herself in honour of the season. Not that she appeared any merrier than usual. But who was I to talk?
Making the wreath, the pudding and the gingerbread provided a distraction and a bit of variety if nothing else.
On Christmas morning I woke to a soft snowfall. Ewan had already left for the mill as usual. I pulled on my coat and boots and stepped out into the fresh, white hush and turned my face to the sky. Giant flakes drifted down all around me. Somewhat buoyed in spite of myself, I was thankful I had made my small efforts. I set to my chores, then packed up my gingerbread creation and headed up to Browns’ where I knew there would be Christmas cheer in abundance.
Indeed the family enveloped me the moment I entered. The children clamoured to show me the treasures Santa Claus had left them.
“Look, Mrs. MacLaughlin—an orange and a stick of candy! And the whole of it’s for me!”
“See mine, Mrs. MacLaughlin?”
“What have you got in your package, Mrs. MacLaughlin?” young Peter asked.
“I’ve brought a surprise. Shall we set it out here on the table where everyone can have a look?”
The children crowded around as I unveiled the little house with its candy-shingled roof and walls and its gumdropped laneway. I had made six gingerbread figures—one for each child—cavorting in the egg-white icing snow.
“Look at the windows!” cried Harriet. “They’re like real glass, but candy!”
“Look at the peppermints!”
“This gingerbread boy is me! See, Mama, he’s got a snowball!”
When I looked up Abby was staring at me with the most bewildered look on her face. She smiled then, of course, and gushed about the house, but I had caught her out. I felt my social self peel away, outwardly listening to the children’s questions and exclamations but underneath an awkward ache tugged me away from them.
Later, with the children sent outside to play, Abby turned to me. She cupped my chin with her hand and peered intently into my face. “Penelope, I believe you have that glow. Am I right? When did you have your last…?”
Answering her whispered questions, I pressed my palms to my womb. Yes. I had been so foolish with fussing over my troubles that I had missed the very gifts set before me.
“Yes,” Abby nodded. “There is a glow, I’m sure of it.”
I walked slowly and carefully down to the mill feeling more certain with each step. I found him by the fodder stone.
“Ewan,” I whispered, setting my hand on his shoulder, “I think we may be blessed. A child.”
Ewan cocked his head, stared at my abdomen. “Ah, your extra labour when I was gone. This is your reward.”
I caught a merry laugh as it bubbled up, caught it just in time and contained it in a smile. Had he been a different sort of man I would have teased him that a man’s absence from his wife is seldom rewarded in this way. Instead I leaned over and kissed his cheek.
I SANG AT MY WORK AND PRAYED AND WORKED AND SANG SOME MORE. I felt so strong, so certain. On Sundays I visited with Abby revelling in her little ones as proof of how it would be, splashing optimism everywhere, painting the world with certainty. Abby gave me little dresses as patterns for the wee gowns I stitched and decorated. Mrs. Cunningham deduced or heard the news of my condition. When I met her on the road on my way back from Nettle’s she shot a doubtful frown over my body and advised that after this long time I shouldn’t get my hopes up.
On a winter day like so many of the days that linked dramatic weather—a seasonal day wrapped in batting, an everyday day—I was hauling water to the barn, breaking the ice on the pails and topping them up with fresh water from the well. The barn was coz
y with the warm redolence of animal breath and I took my time with the beasts, stroking Billy’s nose and Pride’s too when she nuzzled over, jealous, patting the flanks of the cows. I had a bred heifer that would freshen in the spring and each day I ran my hands over her and down her hind legs, across her udder, preparing her with my smell and touch, feeding a handful of molasses oats with my ministrations. I carried armloads of hay out to the loafing shed where the sheep greeted my benevolence with bleats of praise. I had just given the horses their winter rations from the oat bag when I felt it. A nudge, a shift. If it had been a sound it would have been a rustle. Involuntarily I looked down at the front of my coat the way one might turn towards a tap on the shoulder. Beneath my palm, beneath a layer of stretched skin and a shallow dome of flesh, a human child had moved. No longer me, now a person in its own right, a baby swaddled by my body, of me but not me. My child, Ewan’s child, whose arms and legs were guided by its own separate little heart and mind. Such a flowering of pure love enveloped me I could barely breathe. “Again, my dear one,” I whispered, coaxing, now clutching my womb with both hands. I waited, my heart as broad and steadfast as the great gentle horses beside me. It came again—a flutter this time. I wept with wonder of it. The quickening.
From that day forward I never sat or stood or moved without thought of the baby I carried beneath my heart. I carried the babe through the cold of February, the ice of March, the inconstancy of April, the dawn of spring and into the fullness of summer. When the water ran low Ewan returned to Curry Point for a fortnight. I hardly noticed his absence. I carried my bundle as it grew and kicked, speaking to me as I spoke to it.
OUR BABY DAUGHTER CAME WITH THE SUMMER DAISIES, WITH ALL the hope and joy that happy flower brings. Ewan smiled and held the child, his disappointment at her sex soothed by her vibrant health. I felt our lives were beginning again, that everything up to this point had been a long meandering opening chapter; necessary detail perhaps, but now the story would begin.
“Our next will be a boy,” I promised.
“Aye,” he said.
THE YEARS OF DAISY’S INFANCY WERE THE HAPPIEST OF OUR LIVES. Although Ewan worked long and hard he stayed closer to home for a couple of years. He travelled to work on other mills but he seldom stayed away for more than a fortnight and he only left when his own mill was shut in the coldest days of winter or the hottest days of summer’s low water. On Sunday afternoons I took the opportunity to nestle the baby into Ewan’s lap. I sat by him in case she fussed. He was frightened, I could see, by the strange warmth that blossomed between them. But it attracted him too, like the campfire of strangers. His heart inched forward with such caution.
“It’s fine, Ewan. You won’t hurt her. Look at her eyes,” I said, setting my hand ever so lightly on his shoulder. He brushed her cheek, his thumb rough with stone but sensitive to the finest powder. “See how she loves her Papa?”
Nothing could repress my spirits. I set Daisy up in her own little manger in the barn while I milked my cows and tended to the calves and hens and fed the pigs. She dozed in the shade while I weeded my garden. Ewan had built a cradle that I kept in the kitchen as I churned and cleaned and baked and made my cheese. I told her stories and sang her songs. She cooed and kicked and laughed away the gloom. Of course Abby made a great fuss over her. We stole what time we could from our work to watch the little ones play. I know she indulged me, listening to my fascinated observations and boasts as though she had not seen all of this six times already with her own.
Sundays were newly made for me. I delighted now in the outing to the little Presbyterian church. Before Daisy I had attended sporadically, always feeling removed from other women, always feeling a mild censure, or pity, or curiosity at least. My days of work in the mill seemed far off now; I had stories of my own to trade—funny things the baby did or said. All manner of prosaic details seemed worthy of comment. On Sundays my skirts fairly twirled as I moved through my few chores. I sang softly as I dressed our baby girl in her finery. I had dyed a patch of leftover bolting silk the softest yellow and stitched a wee pinafore with smocking in shades of blue and mustard for her. I put on my Sunday dress with the double row of buttons down the front. Ewan took his bible down from the shelf. My delight seemed only to confirm his opinions about church as a parade of gossip and new hats. But in my joy his disdain could no longer touch me.
“Come to church with us, Ewan. You could drive the cart while I tend to the baby. It would help pass the day for you at least.”
“Humpf.”
“You’re not really reading that bible.”
“In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” I turned my back on my husband quickly to hide my smile. I tied the ribbons of Daisy’s little bonnet under her chin and blew on her cheeks to light up her smile. “Now we’re pretty,” I whispered, rubbing my nose against my daughter’s in fun and planting a kiss on the little cheek.
“Come, my sweet. Wave bye-bye to Papa.” I set off with my daughter in my arms for a couple of hours of rest and social chat surrounded by others with similar joys and hopes, troubles and woes.
Before I knew it Daisy was toddling. She outgrew her cradle and Ewan built a little bed for her nursery. In the evening whenever Ewan made it up from the mill for his supper before I had put her down to sleep she would watch him with her big blue eyes. One evening she forsook her rag dolly, hauled herself to her feet and made her way towards him, clinging to chairs to steady herself, finally reaching out to grab the great trunks of his legs just as he stood from taking off his boots. Ewan stared down at her, stumped.
“Pick her up, Ewan,” I prompted. “She wants to visit with you.”
He reached down and lifted her into his arms where she laughed like a summer brook and patted his face. For this she earned one of Ewan’s rare and hesitant smiles. For Daisy there was nothing odd in her father’s social awkwardness. She never expected conversation from him any more than she did from the lambs or the calves. Her delight was in handing him his dinner from the basket I carried to him and, on days when he came in for his supper, carrying his boots to the mat behind the stove to warm.
EWAN WORKED, AS ALWAYS, FROM FIRST TO LAST LIGHT AND MORE WHEN he could. The envy I had once felt for his passion had been turned on its head. I saw that it is one thing to build a mill and another entirely to spend your life watching it turn, turn and turn. Not that Ewan was envious of my joy. I knew he did not experience joy the way most others do and so he could not envy it. In all truthfulness I don’t think he could recognize it. He was suspicious even of happiness. But in the place of happiness I believe he could experience a kind of rightness or balance, a sense of enhanced satisfaction perhaps. I had seen him transported when absorbed in his mechanics. Of course he never shirked his work as a miller. On the contrary he seemed to do battle with work, to conquer it, wrestle it into submission and beg for more. But Ewan was an engineer by vocation. When men sought his expertise and he could spend a night, a day, a week, solving a puzzle of power and motion he was like a thirst-starved man landing at an oasis. No, I lie. And what is the point of a story if the truth is swept behind the stove or covered with a mat? It was the look of a drunkard who had been denied drink and suddenly was presented with a fresh jug. The challenge of the puzzle was an intoxicant. I am embarrassed to admit it, but as I said, what is the point of whitewashing? It was my own happiness, our Daisy, that allowed a generosity of spirit to seep back into me. My misery had made Ewan’s gloominess seem like his proper punishment. Now, in my delight, I wanted to spread my joy. I had hit upon a wonderful plan and was waiting for a chance to plant the idea in Ewan’s mind.
DAISY AND I RETURNED FROM CHURCH ONE SUNDAY TO FIND EWAN at the table with figures and equations spread across the paper before him and his nose in his Miller’s Guide, his bible tossed aside. He shut the book in haste as we came in and he stood to leave but I set my hand on his shoulder.
“Ewan,” I said, laughing, “Why shut your books? Why not use your day of leisure to study and figure if that’s your pleasure?” He looked at me as I began helping Daisy with her buttons, half expecting a lecture on the Lord’s Day, but he said nothing. This and my high Sunday mood emboldened me. This might be the moment.
“You have such a fine mind, my dear. Imagine a life built around the work you love. Suppose you were to make an engineer of yourself? So much of your skill is lost in simply running the mill. There are factories everywhere with steam engines and all manner of mechanical innovations. The country is growing and you’re a young man yet. You would have twenty-five years or more to work yet, after your education. Anyone can see how you revel in invention, how apt you are—such a talent.”
He stared at me in horror, as though he had caught me in the act of setting fire to the haymow. “We could live frugally while you study. And you have brothers who could help you. Surely they would help us along—you helped them, after all.”
“Forsake ye not the law of your father!” He spoke with a cold, steely certainty, but if I were silenced by hard looks and harsh tones I would never say anything.
“What law, Ewan? You’ve honoured your father’s trade. You did your mother’s bidding. You helped establish your younger brothers. You have done all a dutiful son could do. Your talents are yours to make the most of now. You know the parable of the talents…”
“So now you are ashamed to be the wife of a miller! You are ashamed to dip your hands in the labour of the Lord, ashamed of the dirt on your hands and the soles of your boots, and on my hands and the soles of my boots. Now I have a wife who wants to parade through the streets of the city showing off fashions and raising spoiled skinny brats who pass their days reading poetry and playing cards, who disdain the labours of the body. ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground,’ sayeth the Lord.”