Lily's Story (15 page)

Although Aunt Bridie had rejected Uncle
Chester’s plea for a genuine birthday cake – “You’ll spoil the
child silly, you old coot” – she had baked strawberry tarts special
for the occasion and even wrapped the newly-made linen blouse and
plain calico skirt in tissue as if it were a real surprise. Uncle
Chester clapped when she opened it; Auntie gave him one of her
quartering glances but said nothing. Later as they sat outside on
wicker chairs in the dooryard perfumed with wild hedgeroses, with
the gloaming of the solstice settling as softly as ash about them,
Bachelor Bill walked over, and through his shy grin – made more
prominent by the absence of all but two mismatching front teeth –
presented Lily with a blue hair ribbon that might have been made of
silk. “Ma bought it for Violet way back, but she don’t wear it,” he
explained. Lily kissed him on the cheek, which either frightened or
scandalized him so much he could not be persuaded to play the
mouth-organ that never left the back pocket of his overalls. When
he had gone, Auntie mumbled about such “fool things” as hair
ribbons, so Lily, though tempted by the encouragement in Uncle’s
eye, hid the gift away with her other precious things. Several
weeks after her arrival, so long ago now, she had thought she ought
to reveal to Auntie the sacred objects in her treasure-pouch, but
even then something told her to hold back, that a lady as angular
and impressive as Aunt Bridie would not likely be overawed by a
talisman or even one of God’s Testaments. So they remained secreted
in her room to be taken out on those few occasions when she had
felt unhappy here, and even then with no sense of why she would be
overwhelmed suddenly with a sadness for things once prized and
irretrievable.

Which was not often. And certainly never on
Saturdays. She reined in Benjamin as they neared Exmouth Street,
the edge of the vast, cleared plain that was soon to be an official
town, a county seat. It was a new split-log road and very rough.
She peeked anxiously back at her cargo of eggs and fresh
raspberries – so neatly packed in the little boxwood containers
Uncle Chester tacked together with such guarded delicacy. Auntie
had given him part of the barn for a workshop, which he shared
uncomplainingly with Sultana the Guernsey and this good-natured
Indian pony. Indeed, even before Lily’s coming Uncle had fashioned
the market-wagon with its double-leather springs and straw padding
and custom compartments for Auntie’s eggs and seasonal
specialties.

Lily had no reason in this world to be sad –
ever. She loved her Aunt and Uncle. She was loved by them. Auntie,
her flame-red hair so earnestly harnessed during the day, would
come to Lily in her own bed with its feather tick, her hair loose
and haphazard, her ice-blue eyes weakened by fatigue, and bending
over her bless Lily’s cheek with a dry, well-meant kiss. “Thank
your maker for makin’ you and givin’ you such a day,” she would
invariably whisper before snuffing the candle. It was the only
religious sentiment ever known to have passed her lips. Auntie did
not, it seemed, believe in “all this churchin’” and what-is-more
preferred not to debate the point. Uncle Chester, if he held an
opinion on the subject, did not offer it. Auntie taught Lily
everything about “how to get along in this world”, taking the girl
with her into the fields where, in the rich humus of the cleared
pine-woods, they grew vegetables of every tint and texture. Not
wheat like the farmers in the townships east along the London Road
or north along the Errol Road, who had to haul their crop to the
grist mills where they “left half their profits” and had to count
on England’s wars in Russia and elsewhere to bump up the price or
let it come crashing down. “Turnips are slow-growin’ but they eat
easy and winter over,” Auntie said more than once during a
back-bending weeding of the strawberries or a hoeing of the
potatoes. Auntie’s skin never tanned, as Lily’s did if she
persisted, so she always wore a bonnet that framed her sharp
features like a sapper’s helmet and a linen shawl that came down
over her wrists and was fastened with a workmanlike pewter clasp.
In the August humidity sweat poured down her legs, staining the
tops of her guardsman’s boots, but not once would she pause to mop
her brow, swinging the hoe or rake or turnip-knife with dogged
efficiency. Lily, wanting to cry out sometimes at her rebellious
muscles, swallowed her aches and grew strong.

These vegetables, and the eggs from their
hundred Rhode Islands, were taken to town each Saturday where they
found a ready market. Although most of the villagers had gardens of
their own, the three hotels and five-boarding houses that served
the numerous bachelor workers busy in the new factories and on the
right-of-way clearance out to Enniskillen – along with the stopover
sailors and passengers – needed a ceaseless supply of eggs and
vegetables in season. Aunt Bridie had been the first to seize this
opportunity, and though she had periodic competition from the
farmer’s market and several other hopeful entrepreneurs, her
reliability, home-delivery service, and unfailingly superior
produce had won her – despite the suspicion with which she was
viewed by the respectable burghers of the fledgling county seat – a
steady and profitable business. “Well,” said Mrs. Salter, the lay
preacher’s ample wife, “I’ll give the Devil her due, she’s a real
worker, that woman.” “Take care of the pennies an’ the pounds’ll
take care of themselves,” Auntie told Lily that day three summers
ago when she had taken her along for the first time to “learn the
business” and “see for yourself how the other-half lives.”

“
Your Auntie’s the smartest
woman in this township,” Uncle Chester said, helping her stake the
beans that second summer. “She knows how to keep the bugs off these
plants better’n anybody else for miles around; learned it from a
book she did, back in the London days. Then she sees this pine-bush
when we first come lookin’ up here, an’ she says here’s the best
spot for what we want but I says it’s a mile from town an’ nowhere
near the cleared lots on the London Road, but she says the soil’ll
be better here, and of course she was right, includin’ that sandy
stretch towards the lakeside where the berries grow big as plums,
an’ includin’ the pine itself which we sold the first year and
every year since – never burnt a log, we didn’t.”

Uncle Chester had lost his rhythm and a
section of the bean plants crashed stupidly to the ground. “Mind
you now, it was cuttin’ them pines that give me the crick in my
back, so’s I ain’t been too good at weedin’ an’ heavy work ever
since, which along with my fluctuatin’ ticker don’t make me the
hardiest farmer.” The bean-bush, surprised, tripped again.

“
Then your Auntie decides
to go in for eggs, so we buys the hens an’ I build the two coops
and we’re in business.” Lil looked at the east field next to
Bachelor Bill’s makeshift barn where their only field-crop – feed
corn – was greening in the sun. “Yessir, it’s your Auntie’s got the
head for business.” And the hands to straighten this crooked wood
and the will to make soft things stiffen and yield.

The sun was fully up when Benjamin went past
the London Road crossing and kept southerly on Front Street at a
brisk trot. To her right, Lily could see the cobalt of the St.
Clair River, its beauty only slightly dimmed by familiarity. She
had not yet seen the Lake, though every day steamers left the bay
for distant points north, and its untouched beaches lay less than a
mile through the pines behind her house – the muffled thunder of
its breakers audible below the wind on stormy nights in April or
November. Auntie did not appreciate young girls “traipsin’ off”.
“Nothin’ to see up there but a lot of water,” she’d add, though
Uncle’s look said otherwise.

Past the London Road lay the town itself,
boasting more than a thousand souls. Already a second main-street
back from the River was filling up with clapboard and split-log
houses and shops and a second tannery. She liked its name:
Christina, which made her think of a copper necklace tinkling in a
breeze. Benjamin, unaided, drew driver and cart straight down Front
Street to the Western Hotel opposite the Ferry Dock, no more than
half a mile from the site of the last gift-giving ceremony. She
always started with the hotels since their staffs were up at dawn
and happy to have her wide-awake greeting. Then she did the
boarding-houses on the five east-west intersecting streets that
stretched, houseless, into cleared land for more than a mile. To
Lily this section looked like a graveyard for trees. By then it was
usually after seven and she moved on to the fifteen or twenty
scattered homes on the route – abodes of the well-to-do who, though
they could afford gardens and gardeners, preferred to be observed
dispensing cash for their produce.

As she pulled up to the St. Clair Inn, Lily
thought fleetingly of those early days when she had huddled under a
shawl clinging to a straight-backed Aunt Bridie, afraid of things
that even months before would not have fazed her. But she had
suddenly become Lily Ramsbottom and strange people stared out at
her and spoke at her in eccentric urban accents. Even so, she
helped by handing Auntie the right boxes, rearranging those left in
the cart, and feeding, watering and soothing Benjamin excessively.
And she kept her ears and a sly eye open…

“Good morning, Bridie,” said Mrs. McWhinney,
the clothier’s wife, in an off-hand way from her watch at the rose
bush. “Just take them right through the shed there and leave them
on the right side of the bench by the sink, that’s a good dear,”
she added, addressing her Sunday school class at the C. of E.

Auntie set the eggs and case of cabbages
raucously on a table by the shed door. “No need to stir, Maggie,”
she called out, “I’ll collect next time.”

Maggie inadvertently cut the throat of a
prize rose.

“Morning, Miz Ramsbottom,” said the Reverend
McHarg’s missus from the back door of the red-fronted brick manse,
her voice carrying to the far pews.

“
Three dozen today,
Clara?”

“
Who’s the little bundle
you brung with you?” Pince-nez poking around Auntie, glinting
towards the cart on the street.

“
Got some late raspberries
I think the youngster’d like. Like to see ’em?”

“
I’ll come out and have a
look, I will,” burbled Mrs. McHarg, tying up the strings of her
mottled bonnet and brushing past a startled Aunt Bridie, who
recovered in time to insert her body between the pince-nez and the
cowering shawl on the cart-seat.

“
Oh what a dear little
orphling! Where
did
you pick such a precious thing up?”

Auntie reached into the cart, drew out a
quart of enticing berries, and said evenly: “These are free, for my
best customer.”

Mrs. McHarg, as a Presbyterian innured to
temptation, faltered long enough to take the offering in both
hands, but quickly regained the offensive. “A foundling?” she asked
with the tip of her Calvinist nose.

Auntie touched the reins smartly and
Benjamin lurched forward. Looking straight ahead she said, “My
daughter,” and was already moving too resolutely for any sort of
riposte to be heard. There was none – though a berry-box may have
cracked open as it struck the ground.

“My gracious, you’re early! Barely got my
bonnet on! But ain’t you a sight for sore eyes; an’ you brung the
wee one along for company. How’s my Lily Blossom doin’ today? Cat
got your tongue?” Mrs. Salter was constitutionally cheerful despite
her husband being a Methodist lay preacher who could, according to
Auntie “rant and roll with the best of them
hell-an-damnationers.”

“
Heard a box of your
berries went bad on you last week,” Auntie said from the side porch
of the St. Clair Inn. “Here’s an extra two boxes of the best.
Guaranteed.”

The good lady blushed. “Goodness me, but
it’s that big-mouth girl of mine blabbin’ an’ exaggeratin’ all over
town. I’ll take the switch to her, I reckon.” She also took the
berries.

Vines of ivy and other exotica climbed about
a third of the way up the walls of the stone cottage belonging to
the Misses Baines-Powell, plump Caroline and fat Charlotte. The
sign in front of their shiny oak door announced “Baines-Powell:
Musical Instruction, By Arrangement.” Auntie tried to explain what
that meant. Only one of the instructresses ever came to the back
door, though not always the same one. The other one hovered in the
draped shadows of the sitting room about five feet behind.

“
Found a slug in my
cabbage,” said Miss Charlotte, peering past Auntie at Lily – who
was holding a rack of berry-boxes – as if there were some direct
but unnamable connection between slugs and girl-helpers of
questionable kin.

“
Boil them like I told
you?” Aunt Bridie said.

“
Of course. Made no
difference. Ugly thing popped out onto Miss Baines-Powell’s plate
an’ she almost ’et it,
didn’t you
dear?
”

Muffled assent from within.

“
Get a rollin’ boil,
Charlotte, an’ keep at it for five to seven minutes. Nothin’ else
can be done.”

“
Hard to get satisfactory
service these days,
isn’t it
dear?
” Caroline, recovered from her fright,
agreed.

Auntie took three boxes of berries from the
rack and set them beside the eggs on the porch step. “Almost forgot
the carrots. Lily, dash out an’ fetch the regular order of carrots,
will you, dear?”

“
You hear about the new
delivery service startin’ up next week?” Charlotte said. Caroline
apparently had heard all about it and thought it a grand idea and
high time, too.