His face is thoughtful under the wild eyebrows.
“You think she knew you weren’t born a man?”
“To be a good trapper you have to see what’s in front of you. Most people are lazy. It’s easier to sort the world into categories than it is to look. If you give them what they expect to see they’ll toss you into the usual box, no questions asked. Moira was not somebody you could fool that way.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes. About twenty-five years ago some company bought the mineral rights to the land around her place. Cleared a road right next to the cabin. Their equipment suffered a lot of breakdowns.” He shrugs, the skin around his eyes creasing in a smile.
“It didn’t stop them. In the end she moved to the Territories. Seven, eight years ago, I got a letter from the man who was her nearest neighbour. He’d mushed into Yellowknife. When he came back out a couple of days later he didn’t see any smoke from the chimney. Went to check on her. She was frozen solid. Heart attack, they thought. The only name and address he found was mine.”
“She didn’t have any family?”
Dad’s brow furrows. “Well yes, she did, at one point. A brother-in-law, anyway.”
“How old was Moira when you met her?”
“Younger than me. I was sixty-six. She could have been sixty. Thereabouts.”
“And the man she was married to ...”
“He was Cree, I know that much. Which would have been ...” He shrugs. “She said something once about service, being in service. Some Englishwoman who thought she was getting a lady’s maid got a scandal instead. If she went off with a Native man it would have been a scandal all right. White men shacked up with Native women, everybody knew that, but the other way round?” He shakes his head.
“Went off with the man she married, the alcoholic?”
“It’s possible.”
“How old was she when she was with him?”
“Young, I think, but all I remember her saying was ‘long back’.”
“Could she have gotten pregnant?”
“Nothing she ever said made me think she had borne a child.” He stares out of the window then looks at me. “Somehow I think she would have told me.”
Chapter Eighty Two
OUTSIDE, THE WIND has picked up. The sun’s behind a veil of cloud. Moira knew Mum wanted a child. But that’s all I know. I’m standing in the driveway. Can’t even decide which way to walk.
The door to the machine shed slides open. Manfred emerges wiping his hand on an oily rag.
“Coffee break,” he says. “Will you join us?”
“That would be nice.” No snarl, nothing.
He’s probably got whiplash from my moods. But they’re both welcoming. The trailer is too. The butterscotch yellow’s cheery, and the apple green curtains have been washed and ironed. It’s far more of a home than my house.
“Cream in your coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“Have a seat.”
I sit on the bench on one side of the table, they sit side by side on the other.
“So,” Victor says, “tell us about Doug.”
Manfred says. “Don’t mind him, Meg. Have a brownie.”
Coffee and orange weave through dark chocolate. Suddenly I feel as cheerful as I was tormented ten minutes ago. “Magic,” I say, waving the brownie at them. “What do you want to know? Not that I can tell you a lot. I work with him. He’s a nice guy. I haven’t had a guy friend in a long time. It helps that he’s gay. I mean he’s emotionally literate in a way a lot of straight men aren’t.”
“Gay?” Victor looks at me with wide eyes.
Manfred’s shaking his head.
“What makes you think he’s gay?”
“Victor.”
“Well, he’s not.”
“What do you mean he’s not?”
“Honeycakes, the only person on this farm that man had eyes for was you. He adores you.”
“He does not.”
Victor raises his eyebrows and purses his lips.
“He does not.” I look at Manfred.
He tips his head sideways, raises one eyebrow.
“When did you two become so camp?”
“In the heart of ever rugged rural gay man,” Victor thumps his chest, “beats ...”
“A fluttering fairy,” Manfred says.
“Stop it. You’re trying to distract me. Are you serious?”
“Yes.” A pair of grey eyes and a pair of brown eyes are suddenly and thoroughly earnest.
“Why would he tell me he was gay?”
“He told you that?”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s the go-to guy at work for any gay issue. Besides his ex ... His brother ...” I trail off. “Shit. There have been things that didn’t seem right. But ...”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“What and look like a complete idiot? Besides it would sound like some weird come-on. ‘Hey, are you gay because if not ...’”
They’re both looking at me, identical smiles on their lips. “You like him, don’t you? Ben said ... Ow.” Victor yelps. Manfred smirks.
“Ben said what?”
“He worries about you.”
“Being a lonely spinster?”
“Being alone in a big city when most of what you care about isn’t there.”
“Oh.”
He adores you. I want to ask, ‘Are you sure?’ Which of course I don’t because I know it’s not true.
Doug is not interested in me. If he’s not gay he’d have made some kind of move by now. Besides, all he’s seen is that I’m a complete fucking basket case. He’s a friend. A good friend.
“More coffee?”
Victor’s holding out the pot.
“No thanks. I should go back to Dad’s.”
“Well here, take these with you for lunch. Kale spanakopita and a Greek salad.”
I shake my head. “You guys are amazing.”
They shrug the same shrug then laugh, looking at each other. “Together too long,” they say.
For a moment I want it so fiercely I can’t breathe, that ease with another person. The being known.
Chapter Eighty Three
“WHAT’S FOR LUNCH? I saw you bringing something over.”
“Spanakopita. Shall I put them in the oven? They’re supposed to bake for twenty minutes.”
When I come back into the living room I ask, “Dad, why do you think Moira was so secretive about where she lived?”
“I wondered that myself. At first I assumed it was because she was a woman living alone but, once I got to know her, that didn’t seem likely. I don’t think she was afraid of much. Besides, she was well armed.”
“What then?”
“She liked knowing no-one would come knocking. She didn’t have much time for people.”
“Except you.”
Dad nods. “I think she enjoyed my company. But she didn’t need company, you know?”
“Did you? Do you?” The question surprises me as much as it does him.
After a moment he says, “Yes. I learned that, prospecting alone.” He stares off at the mountains then turns to look at me. “Funny you asked me that, about company. When you were out for your walk I was thinking about the settler and his dog. The terrible loneliness. Men who’d served in the war, they were entitled to a free quarter section of land. He wasn’t the only ex-serviceman we encountered who was in a bad way. Shell shock, isolation, grinding work. You got to know the look in their eyes. Haunted. And ashamed. You were supposed to come back and get on with life. As if nothing had happened.”
“Were you affected like that?”
I’m not sure he’s going to answer but then he nods. “The first season in the Monashees. A local shopkeeper was fronting me my gear, feed for the horse and me. In return for half of any stake I claimed. Half of nothing was nothing. We both knew that. But there was no work to be had. Nobody had money to buy his goods. We agreed on
a general area I’d explore. Copper. Silver. Gold. I spent the summer in the mountains. Alone except for my horse. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did. I found I wasn’t easy in myself. But certain places helped.
“There was a little glade, just below the tree-line, nothing spectacular but I always felt comforted when I sat there. The trees wrapped around you but you could still look out across the ranges. Then lightning struck and that part of the mountain went up in smoke. When I walked into it, my little glade, all charred and acrid, the war came back. The pig shed. The dying soldier. All the dying soldiers. The moaning. Screaming. Cursing, praying mangled men. The horses. I tried to make it go away. But it wouldn’t. Or only for a few minutes. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I certainly wasn’t collecting rock samples. I could hardly look at my horse. Because suddenly I’d see him torn apart.” He shakes his head. “I’d had flashes, before. Bad dreams. But I could always set them aside, go on about my business. One night the settler came into my mind. I remembered Dorothy walking right up to him, sitting down next to him. I could see her eyes, so clear and steady.
“She was showing me what to do. That’s how it felt. I had been trying to push away the images. My experiences. I was afraid they would destroy me. Instead I saw I must allow them in.
“The strain went out of me and I slept for the first time in a week. My dreams were terrible and I woke weeping. It was several days before I could go about my work but I had come through to the other side. The memories would return but I wasn’t afraid of them. Not the way I had been.” He looks directly at me. “Does that make any sense to you?”
“Yes. Yes it does.”
He lifts his nose and sniffs. I smell it too. Something beginning to burn.
They’re not too bad, the spanokopita, just a little darker than golden. As soon as we sit down to eat Dad asks, “How’s work?”
“Over,” I say. “We all quit.”
“Oh.”
He’s disconcerted. His neutral topic evaporated.
“You don’t think they’ll ask you all to stay on?”
“Not a chance.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m not sure. I may be able to get E.I.—Employment Insurance—while I figure it out.”
“And Doug, he resigned too?”
I nod. Dad wants more. I relent enough to say, “He has a business making harnesses. We’re all going to get together at his place tomorrow for a farewell barbeque.”
“Will you miss it, the job?”
“My co-workers, definitely. And the clients.”
“Has it affected you, working somewhere like that? You must have seen a lot, heard a lot.” Dad’s put down his knife and fork. He’s considering me, head tipped to one side. More blue jay than hawk.
“People have been through so much. It’s painful to listen sometimes. But, well, at least I’m feeling. Feeling for people, you know? It’ll just swell up in my heart, sadness but also a sort of wonder. That people survive what they do. And can still love.
“I pray for people because I don’t know what to do with all the feelings. I don’t have any idea what I’m praying to, but I pray anyway, for something to help them along the way.”
“And do you believe there is help?”
“Something helped me get sober. I’m not sure of much else. What about you?”
“A lot of religion seems childish to me. A demand for certainty in an uncertain world. On the other hand, I have had my angels. It seems rude not to acknowledge them.”
It’s my turn to nod but I’m shy suddenly of his eyes. And hungry. I haven’t touched my spanakopita. Forget the knife and fork. I pick it up and bite into buttery filo then dense kale and salty feta.
Dad forks in the last mouthful he’d left politely sitting on his plate.
“Yum,” I say, trying not to scatter filo everywhere.
Dad licks his forefinger, dabs up flakes from his own plate and transfers them to his mouth.
“Mum wasn’t a good cook, was she?”
Dad shakes his head. “Even when she wasn’t so inclined to frown on the pleasures of the flesh she tended to boil things to death. Might have been the lumber camps. They weren’t famous for haute cuisine.”
“Was it unusual for a woman to have that job?”
“She always knew how to keep the boys in line.” His voice is light but a shadow crosses his face. After a moment he says, “It does help.”
“What does?”
“Talking about things. We didn’t, you know. Talk about the war. Afterwards. There I was in London. No family. No one to welcome me back. But it was more than that. There wasn’t any place for me. For what I’d experienced. I wasn’t the only one in that boat. Maybe there were some who swam right back into the lives they’d lived before but for most, well, it was an adjustment. Nowadays you’d be encouraged to talk about it. Then, even if someone did want to hear—which mainly they didn’t, least said soonest mended, you know—but even if they did, it was another world.
“You were back among lighted windows, rain shining on the streets, women drinking tea in Lyon’s Corner Houses. An ordinary world and all the time you knew there was another world which was equally real which was mud and rats and wire and mines and screaming and the booming of the guns and men gassed and burned and maimed and dying and all you could do was know them both, both worlds, as if you were walking along a crack in the world, a foot on either side. There wasn’t anything to say, you see?”
“I think so.”
“The worst was the war people wanted. The women especially. They wanted champions. Glorious exploits. Men would give it to them, that war. Those who spoke of the war at all. Because who could explain that in the end they fought not for home or country or King or Empire? They fought for each other. For the ones who lived and died in that other country.” He falls silent.
“And what about you? What about the ambulance drivers?”
“And the nurses, the women in the canteens.” He shrugs. “We were supposed to go back to our husbands. Or our fathers.”
“But you didn’t. Did you want to?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t seem to have a reverse gear. I couldn’t imagine going back any more than I could imagine returning to England at the end of the Sunday School mission.”
“You and Dorothy, didn’t you talk about the war?”
“We didn’t see each other for a while. She wasn’t best pleased when she learned that, far from having my father’s blessing, I had deliberately flouted his orders. She felt, correctly, that I had misled her. It put her in an awkward position, living, as she and her father did, quite close to my family, and moving in the same circles.”
“She forgave you enough to tell you about needing a driver for the mission van.”
“She wasn’t one to hold a grudge.” He yawns. “Sorry.”
“Nap time?”
“Twenty winks.”
“I think I could do with a few myself. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Upstairs, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. It’s really just painted boards nailed to the undersides of the rafters. Must get cold up here in the winter. I turn my head. Where the four slopes of the roof meet, there’s a wooden block with something carved into it. I’ve never seen it before, but then I’ve never lain on this bed in daylight. It’s a circle with two strong lines dividing it into four, plus two fainter ones dividing it again. Like the Medicine Wheel Emmett drew. Like a compass, more likely. And yes, at the end of the line pointing north, two short lines spread out from the tip. If I moved back here this would be my room. If Dad would have me. I couldn’t stay up baking all hours of the night. And what would I do for a living?
And Doug?
What about Doug?
He adores you.
He does not.
But he likes me.
And I like him. Oh yes I do. A silver bubble rises in my chest.
He likes me enough to call me up and bring lunch.
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And walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death.
What?
Whatever it was that happened the other day, he was there. Clear and steady.
And something did happen. I’m different.
Drifting into sleep I smell tobacco smoke, feel soft fur under my hands. Safe. Safe in the warp and weft of their voices.
Chapter Eighty Four
I WAKE FROM a dream I don’t remember, thick-mouthed. Sodden with sleep. I hate sleeping during the day. Hate waking up in my clothes. Did enough of that in the old days. Staring around trying to figure out where I was. Who was lying next to me, half the time.
The toilet flushes. Dad’s back in his chair by the time I get downstairs.
I sit down. “Dad, why did you take me with you that time, to deliver the hides?”
“To Moira’s? She asked me to.”
“To what?”
“To bring you.” He’s looking at me, surprise in his face.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did she know about me?”
“I told her.”
“When? How did that conversation come about?”
“A few days after you arrived she phoned. I remember the timing because I had just made an appointment to talk to a social worker.”
“Did you tell her about me then, on the phone?”
He nods.
“How did the topic come up?”
“You mean, did she ask some leading question? She didn’t get a chance.” He smiles. “I was half-way to agreeing with Polly that it was a miracle, first Polly stopping drinking then you appearing like that.”
“When you told her about me, what did she say?”
Dad frowns. “I’m trying to remember. Nothing much. I told her about the appointment. That it looked hopeful that you could stay with us while we applied for approval as foster parents.
“She told me she was going away again. That was why she was calling. She’d let me know when I could bring more hides. I didn’t hear from her for almost a year. When I did, that was when she asked me to bring you. She said she’d like to meet you. I didn’t think anything of it.”
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