by Linda Little
“Can you clean this?” he asked. “Bring it to my room.” He turned and left her holding the coat.
LIZZY BRUSHED THE COAT AND BROUGHT IT UP TO THE MILLER’S ROOM.
“Have you considered my proposal?” he asked her.
Had she considered it? Of course not. Yet here she stood and when she opened her mouth her sentences had been neatly prepared. “I need a home for my children,” she said. “I need a house where I can take in lodgers. Then I could keep us all, feed us all, with my own labour.” She said this as a piece of information. She had not conceded anything.
“Yes.” Ewan could see she was a hard-working woman, clever and forward-thinking and devoted to her family. Blessed with four sons while he had none. She understood his dilemma and he understood hers.
“The Lord has brought us together,” Ewan said.
“I don’t know about that.” Bitterness tinged her words but her tone did not seem to touch the miller. He wanted to know about her husband. Did he remain a man? Would he believe a child born to her was his own?
A flash of anger lit her cheeks. He wanted to leer over salacious details, see her abased. There were occasions when she was required for certain services, certain manipulations, none of which were his business.
She met his eyes with defiance, but a defiance that fizzled and died for want of anything to defy. Ewan MacLaughlin might have been asking for hay for his horse for all the leering in his eye. She swallowed and could not find her voice. That she should find herself so deep in such business negotiations…
“He remains a man, like you say,” she said.
And was it possible for her to remain distant from him when required, the miller wanted to know. “There can be no mistake, no mixing of the seed.”
Once in a blue moon her husband would find that slender nether region of drunkenness separating disabling pain from disabling inebriation. In this state he was drunk enough that she could tell him what she needed him to hear in the morning. With all she had to manage these days, this was a simple matter.
“He’ll believe it’s his. There won’t be no mistake.” He will. Won’t be. Had she agreed then?
“A son.”
“’Less the child is a girl.”
“No. If you conceive, I will have a son.”
“Wanting a thing don’t make it so. This I know for pure fact.”
“I don’t need a girl. I’ll not pay for a girl.”
“So if it’s a girl, what do I get then?”
“If it’s a girl, you get the girl.”
Lizzy knew then that this strange man, for all his absurdity, was not deceiving her. She knew now that her decision was well and truly made and instantly it seemed as though she had set upon on this course of action months ago. If Ewan MacLaughlin were going to lie, this would be the place. Better for him to promise the moon, then simply disappear if the child were a girl. She would have no defence. How could she accuse him and chase after him with her husband alive and lying there in the bed?
“If I take the risk then I take the prize,” she said. Not just a rented house by the shipyards with a couple of rooms to stack up half a dozen working men with their meagre pay, their laundry and bottomless appetites—day labourers working today and ruined tomorrow—but a proper inn with rooms for several respectable lodgers who paid up front for a month of decent board and a couple more rooms for travellers who might take supper and a pint in the snug with a cozy fire. There would need to be a stable for their horses. She would have an Irish girl or two for the scullery. She would have a man for the stable and for heavy work. Her boys would tend the hearths and run to the shops and tend the horses when they were not in school. And there would be a room off the kitchen for her husband. There would be money for doctors, and if they proved as useless as she supposed, then for rum or opium even. Double or nothing was just straight odds. This would be her only chance to make something of them all. “Triple or nothing,” she said.
It took surprisingly little time to iron out the arrangement. He would plant the seed now and every time he passed through. She had a year to conceive. During this time she would receive a small stipend—enough, when combined with her washing and scrubbing, to keep her family from freezing or starving. When he saw the evidence of a child he would double the stipend. Upon the birth of his son she would receive a lump sum (enough to establish herself in the sort of inn she described) and a biannual payment for rearing the boy. Should she give birth to a daughter—not a cent. If God did not smile on the arrangement then their business was done, secrecy necessarily assured by both parties.
They shook hands like any two men completing a deal. She took off her petticoat. He dropped his trousers and lifted her skirts. After all that had been stripped from her, tossed at her, required of her; after all her fears and suffering, with the welfare of her four sons hanging in the balance, this small thing was not nearly as bad as she had feared. The world had taken greater liberties with her than this.
She conceived readily. The miller was true to his word. When he could see the swelling of her belly he doubled the small stipend that kept them all alive on potatoes and turnips. For the following months she woke each morning with the knowledge that the child she carried would make or break them. She suffered terrible nightmares in which her boys were hauled off one at a time—as she searched for one, another disappeared until she awoke frantic to find her reality only slightly less precarious. She meted out the money slowly and spread it widely to avoid suspicion. They had milk one day and sausage the next. Then only potatoes. On Sundays when she managed an extra tot for her husband, enough to let him float above the pain, he boasted loud and long about the coming child. He had been a fine man once—tall and proud and strong. Now that she no longer set her boys to sleep whimpering with hunger, guilt tapped at her heart from time to time. But guilt simply offered a holiday from the vicious, insidious fear that twisted its talons into her guts every time her hand fell to her swelling womb.
The day the baby boy was born and placed in her arms Lizzy Wainwright laughed like an imbecile. The midwife was concerned about hysteria but her fears proved to be unfounded. Lizzy named the new baby boy Laughlin according to instruction and sent the prearranged message. Dear Sir, We have recently received shipment of the merchandise you ordered…
On his way back from his summer commission Ewan detoured around to Saint John town. He held the baby in his arms. He saw his own mother’s brow in the little face, his brother Sander’s chin, and Ewan smiled until his cheeks hurt. He felt the blessings of the Lord descend on him.
Mrs. Lizzy Wainwright moved her family uptown into a sturdy two-storey house with a servant’s room in the attic and an inviting verandah that wrapped around the corner to catch the morning sun. It was not a grand house, but it was fine and roomy. To the quizzical she spoke vaguely of an inheritance from a wayfaring brother who had struck gold before meeting an untimely death. Lizzy set to work to fill her house with paying custom.
Mrs. Wainwright ran a tight ship. She kept one eye open for bargains, which she loved, and the other for freeloaders, which she could sniff out from a hundred paces. She kept her husband quietly numb over the six years it took him to wither completely and die. The five Wainwright boys grew strong and healthy. They ate meat every day and always had good shoes and sturdy clothes. They split firewood and filled coalscuttles and swept grates. They ran messages and brushed down horses and attended school right up through grade eight. The youngest one, the bright-eyed Laughlin, was always a little better dressed, guarded a bit more closely, assigned the lighter chores. He was the most likely to end up with a toy or trinket that caught his eye. But such was often the way with the youngest, surely. When the time came, he was sent up the street to the high school rather than following his brothers out to take up some dockside apprenticeship—cooper or carpenter. Twice a year Ewan MacLaughlin arrived in Saint John with a tight package of surreptitious cash. There was always a room available at the reputable boarding h
ouse with the inviting verandah. Always young Laughlin was sent to polish his boots, warm his woolens, bring him fruit.
“Play up to him,” his mother instructed. “Be a good boy. Recite a lesson or a Bible verse. Show him that bootjack that you made. Sing out your fourteen times tables.” The boy could always extract some small prize from Mr. MacLaughlin: candy or toy or coin.
“Of course he likes you best,” his mother said. “You’re so wonderful handsome and clever. Who else has got such brightness?” Young Laughlin took well to his favoured status and, like so many of the favoured, never questioned its validity or deservedness.
Then, on the boy’s sixteenth birthday, the Devil stood at the door, demanding his due. The boy’s parting would be complete and irrevocable. This Lizzy knew, although the boy did not. She packed his bags knowing that what he did not take she would sell or disperse or burn. She squashed her pain with stern reminders that she had raised five sons to manhood. She had done well. She told the boy that Mr. MacLaughlin had chosen him over hundreds to apprentice at one of the finest flour mills in the Maritimes. With his charms and talents he was sure to best every miller in the region. She baked a ginger cake and kept a smile on her face as she talked about the promise of his future. True to her part of the bargain she revealed no secrets, dropped no hints. At first light the next morning she handed him over to his new master, stood on the verandah and waved them off.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
PENELOPE
CHARITY AND LAUGHLIN WERE TO BE MARRIED. I argued to put off the date, thinking perhaps if she lost the child … or perhaps Nettle or (God forbid) Mrs. Cunningham knew of a potion. I could find Charity a position away from here. With Ewan back to mind the mill maybe I could take her to town. But of course I was only grasping at straws; it was useless. When Ewan had made his plan he had sealed off all possible avenues of escape. He sent for the local minister. I remember frost had killed the last of the asters so there were no fresh flowers for the wedding, but I had a few dried rose petals to fix in Charity’s hair. I remember brushing and braiding her hair—brushing, braiding, pinning up her long, beautiful hair, soft as spring sunlight. Her perfect skin, almost luminescent with youth. She smiled. I remember this, in all my anguish, her face lit with the adventure of it all. A bride. Ewan would not wait for a bridal gown so she wore her Sunday dress with a hasty wrap I made over from a cotton-silk dress she had loved and outgrown. I remember the blue of it with the stylized birds in ivory and indigo. How the blue caught her eyes! I remember my pitiful attempt to spruce up the parlour—red rose hips, drying fall leaves tenacious with colour. The boy must have had a suit, I don’t remember. I know the minister took a cup of tea before he left. Angel food cake.
The boy no longer stalked my daughter around the farm and mill; now he had her in his bed in his room across the hall. I watched my daughter learn the lessons women know.
But all was not lost. There was hope to be found amid the wreckage yet. I watched her belly swell and I watched her being drawn into the wonder of new life. I pulled out the trunk with Daisy and Charity’s infant dresses. She held them and hugged them to her. “Momma,” she said, “you must teach me to sew. I’ll learn this time—I swear it.”
Still a month shy of her sixteenth birthday her pains began. I did what I could to ease her suffering. After a day and a night of struggle and tears she finally produced the child. Mrs. Cunningham, in her perfunctory way, declared that despite all the hollering, no damage had been done and Charity would recover her strength in due time. The child was exquisite. I nestled into the bed and held Charity as she held the new babe, the three of us entwined in bliss.
EWAN HAD HIS SON. And his son had his mill. And now his son had a son. Ewan rode to town to register the birth. In a moment of alleged befuddlement he registered the supposed Laughlin Ewan Wainwright as “Ewan Wainwright MacLaughlin.” “Don’t bother about that,” he said to the boy when he returned home with the botched paperwork. “It’s MacLaughlin’s Mill anyway. It’s better like this.” He unscrewed the cap of a rum flask and drank deeply from it then pressed the cool curve of the bottle into the boy’s hand.
This was the first and only time I ever saw Ewan MacLaughlin drunk. It was the last time I ever saw him whole. Whatever he had been holding at bay he ceased to battle. Satan’s greed knows no bounds. Once he had Ewan’s soul he came for his mind and his body, biting off great mouthfuls at a time. Ewan’s right hand stiffened and his right foot turned leaden to the point that he could only step and drag across a room. He sat in his chair often drifting off then startling awake to thump on his chest as though rousting his dozing heart. He took to cackling at nothing, a most unpleasant sound, especially for a man who had laughed so seldom in his life. He would call out, “Triple-or-nothing! A sporting girl!” and tumble into a fit of braying. One day I found him hopelessly tangled in harness by the horses’ stalls, running oats through his fingers as though he had no idea what the strange substance was. That was the last excursion he made. The next morning I found him immobilized in bed, his right side dead to him, his left side weak and flailing. Before I had time to consider how I would manage to care for this remnant, Lucifer finished his task.
I hated Ewan MacLaughlin. That I had once betrayed him physically was too little satisfaction. This was the only grief I felt as they lowered his coffin into the grave. After the burial I gathered up my clothes and my effects and moved downstairs to the little room off the kitchen. I wanted Charity to have the pretty nursery off the master bedroom. Also, I admit, I wanted the boy to see all he had to manage. Of course my son-in-law saw only the grandeur of the biggest room with the bright windows, their views of the barnyard and the road beyond the lawn. He saw the wardrobe where he hung his new suit. And he saw the bed where he enjoyed my daughter.
With the reading of the will it came as no surprise that Ewan had left his mill and land and tools and outbuildings all to Laughlin. I was left the use of the house for as long as I lived, but the house itself was Laughlin’s.
As for Charity, I feared for her. She seldom smiled. She spent most of her time stretched out on the parlour sofa with the baby beside her. She was made a woman too soon. She held her fingers out for her baby boy to clamp his tiny fists around and she patted his chubby belly. She held his legs and clapped his perfect little feet together, she blew her breath across his scalp to ruffle the gossamer down that swirled on his precious head, but when she sang to him the song came out in a half hum always strained through her teeth. I plied her with meat broth and milk that she consumed without argument or appetite but she could not make adequate milk for the babe. We would need to keep my dark-faced Jersey milking through the winter whatever the cost.
With Ewan safely out of the way Mrs. Cunningham felt free to pop up at her leisure to dispense teas and tonics and the gloomy advice that was her currency.
“That girl always had too much spirit. No wonder she’s gone sulky. Hard work is what the girl needs. She’s awful young, but ready or not, this one had no choice on marrying—plain enough.”
I took her tonics and turned her out. Charity’s girlhood friends had been few enough what with all Ewan’s dictates but still there were half a dozen she had shared girlhood enthusiasms with. After the sudden marriage and swelling belly it was clear that some girls had been forbidden to visit by their mothers. They did not want their cautionary tales softened by the inescapable goodness of my daughter. A few girls came around once or twice and admired the baby, but Charity had lost the bubbly energy that had made her such engaging company. And anyway, they no longer inhabited the same world. Charity had crossed a river. The minister’s daughter came by with a knitted bonnet for the baby and pail of self-righteousness. Later I heard of the salacious stories she had spread about my daughter, for her own amusement and popularity I suppose.
WHATEVER I FELT ABOUT EWAN, THERE WAS NO DOUBT THAT WE HAD depended on his seasonal labour. He had always seen to our physical needs. Now Ewan’s and Charity
’s labour was lost to me and in its place I had only one swaggering ignorant town boy. With the fall harvest in full swing I returned to work in the mill. The boy boasted of the crops he had standing in his fields and he brought handfuls of the golden seed heads to parade in front of the local farmers, but despite my urgings he would neither reap the fields nor hire out the work. Up at the house Charity could not manage the churning or the heavy water buckets for the washing. Even the bread was often beyond her—more than once she wandered off to rest leaving the dough half kneaded on the table for the flies. Wagons lined up by the mill. I felt old and fragile and unable to fend off mounting despair. One gloomy afternoon at the close of October I sank to the floor beneath the spur wheel, collapsed on my haunches, buried my face in my hands and let the rumble encompass me. I believe I may have been sobbing when Laughlin found me there. He twisted with embarrassment but I was beyond caring.
“Oh. You’ve lost your husband. I’m sorry for your grief. I, I…”
I looked up at him in amazement. His imbecilic features fired my desperation into rage. I felt my skin turn scaly, the tears on my cheeks turn to quicksilver. I rose to face him; all my pent-up indignation, resentment and frustration erupted.
“You are too much a boy and not enough a man! You have a wife and a son and a household to provide for. While the harvest piles up all around us you have a year’s living to earn. And there you stand, as gay and easy as a girl at a fair. Do you know the cows that feed your babe need to eat in the winter? This is why you have a team of horses with broad backs and deep chests. Do you know how many cords of wood you need to chop to heat the house and how many cords you need to fire the kiln? And do you know that in the spring you must plant those fields of yours? You have to plant turnips and oats and wheat and make enough hay to keep these beasts from one year’s harvest to another and enough for next year’s seed besides. And enough to replace the oats you ruin in the kiln through your incompetence, and don’t forget you need enough for your family to eat through the winter. What you harvest for milling is as close to free money as a man can expect in this world. That is why Ewan made and farmed those extra fields of oats you spend your time boasting about. You stand there as helpless as your little one, waiting for someone to praise the sparkle in your eye, the sunshine in your singing, your handsome face. I know who you are better than you know yourself. I have no desire to stand around while we all starve to death watching you comb your hair. We are living right now on last year’s work. Where do you think we will be next year at this time with you dividing your time between the daybed and the preening glass?