Lily's Story (26 page)

O
nly Lily’s affection
for the Templetons and her deep sense of gratitude towards them
gave her the courage to continue smiling and pretending to be moved
by the ritual references to her beauty and charm. Certainly Mrs.
Templeton had done her best with a sow’s ear. It was Aunt Bridie
who’d insisted she come into stay with her benefactress for a full
week before the event: “You’ll have to get used to city ways all
over,” she said. “Won’t be easy gettin’ them feet of yours into
shoes again.” Mrs. Templeton had sent two strapping farm-lads out
to Bridie’s place “to help out”, but they returned crestfallen an
hour later. Lily’s outfit had been made by Mrs. Templeton’s
dressmaker “from the ground up this time”, with the addition even
of a parasol, white gloves and linen handkerchiefs. “My word, Lily,
what a figure you’ve got! Not even the farm can spoil you, though
it’s tryin’,” said Mrs. Templeton, tears pressing against her lids
as her fingers unconsciously brushed the calluses embossed on the
girl’s hands. Lily tolerated all the fuss, tried to be joyful when
his Worship whirled her about the parlour to the thump of the piano
“for old times’ sake.” She knew how much they missed their
daughters. From the maid she learned that both daughters had
promised to come down from Toronto for the Prince’s visit but at
the last minute received invitations, through their prominent
husbands, to attend the Royal Ball at Osgoode. Despite her own
personal anxiety about the coming event, Lily felt and responded as
best she could to the special obligation placed upon
her.

“I
don’t think you’ll see madam stay in
this town much longer,” Bonnie candied to Lily one day. But she
would say no more.

Why didn’t you come, Tom?
Lily thought, listening to the last of the toasts. She was as
puzzled as she was hurt. The talisman had pulsed as she had held
it; its augury was as clear as a proclamation. How had she mis-read
it?

“
Great news,
pet! I just knew the Prince had an’ eye on you! We’ve been invited
aboard the
Michigan
! And –” Mrs.
Templeton lowered her voice theatrically, “that old snoop of a Duke
ain’t comin’.”

But Lily knew whom the royal
glance had favoured whenever discretion permitted. Seated two
chairs from her at the woman’s table, the dark lady occupied her
own special kind of throne.

3

A
lice Templeton and
Lily sat apart from the others on scarlet-striped deck chairs
letting the warm September breeze ruffle their tea and parasols,
and watching the guests preen and promenade before the princely
presence. The ladies coasted by like bevies of exotic sea-birds
looking for land. The men gathered for serious gossip around a ring
of cigars. The Prince himself had changed into a smart blue tunic
of only faintly military character with gilded epaulettes and
splendid brass buttons. He stood in his proud accoutrements on the
foredeck of the ship for all the world like a Viking commander
daring the horizon to drop away or a Nelson staring down the
two-eyed French. Surreptitiously he munched on a cookie as the
conversation of Cap Dowling and his party of monopolizers drifted
insubstantially around him. Undaunted, the young ladies, loosed
from chaperones and made valiant by their fletched and crinolined
finery, tacked and jibbed past the Commodore in hope that he might
cast a mariner’s eye upon an unguarded throat, a careless ankle, a
shameless
coup
d’oeil
. The Prince hove to his
duty.

Ahead of them Lily could
see only a vague horizon of mixed blue – sky and water – as if out
here the elements were permitted to blend their irreconcilable
properties, the ordinary bonds of space being temporarily forfeit.
Behind them and to the west the vee of the shoreline grew faint.
Lily began to feel queasy. She quit staring out at the water and
turned back to catch Mrs. Booth-Pickering’s bitter denunciation of
the Dowlings of this world. Lily noted that said apostate was
engaged in an animated monologue with His Highness. A few feet away
Lady Marigold – her luxuriant sensuality limned by a white hat and
dress – observed her lover’s gestures with cunning impassivity,
with the patience of instinct and chastening experience. While the
debutantes and duennas fought against the debilitating sea-breeze
by clutching hats to head, manning bumbershoots, and wheeling
astern whenever it was propitious, Lady Marigold removed her hat
and hair-pins and let the wind have its way. Lily remarked with
some satisfaction that the Prince took every opportunity to glance
over at the bereaved widow, though she gave no signal to either
man.

Dowling
suddenly turned away from the Royal Guest and came over to the
Templeton clique. “His Highness ha
s had a long day,” he proclaimed. He’s going to take a nap
in his quarters.”

No one would
have been terribly surprised if Cap had trailed His Eminence and
joined him in his nap, but he did not. The Prince moved alone
towards the cabin deck with the stiff grace of an aging monarch who
relies more and more on his tunic and brass to carry the burden
of
noblesse
oblige
. There was a flutter
and rearranging of plumage among the ladies, fresh cigars and
configurations appeared amongst the men, and the ship – almost
beyond landfall – circled and headed south-east towards
civilization. A low mist had come up, blurring the horizon on all
sides; the afternoon sun glowed carmine, shimmered and bled into
the mist, eerie and menstrual.

Lily was waiting to see
if Lady Marigold would make her move when someone touched her
sleeve and she turned round to find the Prince’s valet: “His
Highness would like to see you in his suite,” he said as if
announcing supper.

I
t took a few seconds
for the import of the message to reach Lily. When it did, she
glanced about, saw that the Templetons were engaged, and followed
the valet’s trails to the royal rooms. Actually the captain’s
quarters had been hastily re-tailored in Detroit to fit the Royal
Personage. When the man-servant opened the little varnished door
with the brass knobs, Lily entered what would normally have served
the skipper as office and sitting room. A large desk, a brocade
settee and purplish Queen Anne chair struck Lily’s eye immediately.
The Prince was not at home.

“
This way,
miss,” the valet said, using his usher’s voice.

Lily stepped through the
opened door and entered a small chamber. The Prince was seated on
an undersized, embroidered chair before an escritoire beneath the
porthole. Smoky light poured in through it and fell diagonally
across a twin to the Prince’s chair, across an oval Oriental rug on
which Samurai contended with a specie of giant in defence of
several robust, semi-clothed virgins, and over a
vermillion-and-white scrolled quilt which made no pretense of
hiding the silk sheets beneath it. This was, incontestably, a
bedroom.

Set up on the escritoire was a
table cloth on which had been placed a silver bucket sprouting a
bottle of champagne and two crystal glasses that would sing at the
merest hint of a fingernail. A black cigar, cut but unlit, lurked
in a gold ashtray.

“
Please, come
in,” said the Prince rising and extending his hand with careless
elegance towards the unoccupied chair. “It’s Lily, is it
not?”

Lily was so
struck with the English orotundity of his voice – at once formal
and casual, distant and ingratiating, a voice that would deliver
speeches-from-the-throne as if they were
Elizabethan sonnets – she did not immediately reply.
“Yes, Your Highness,” she said. Then: “Lily Fairchild.”

The Prince looked puzzled for a
moment. “Please, sit down. Let me take your gloves and hat.”

Lily sat on the edge of the
chair. When she peeled off her elbow-length gloves, she tried to
keep her palms down. In removing her hat she pulled out not only
the hat-pin but the barrette that held her hair in check. It
tumbled forward. She heard the royal breath indrawn. She didn’t
look up again until he said, “Will you join me in a glass of
champagne?”

“
Yes, please,
Your –”

“
Call me
Albert,” he said. “My mother does.”

Lily laughed. “I don’t think I
could,” she said.

“
Please
forgive my informality,” he said, referring, Lily assumed, to the
fact that he had removed his tunic, vest, collar and ties, and was
seated in evident comfort in his trousers and open shirt.
“Uniforms, I’m afraid, offer more pleasure to the adulating crowds
than to the objects of their worship.”

Lily smiled, quite aware that
this was a quip used on many an occasion – in part to disguise the
shyness, perhaps even uncertainty, she was sure she detected in his
demeanour when she herself grew brave enough to look directly at
him. He was popping the champagne cork with practised aplomb, but
when he came to pour it, Lily saw his hand shake a little.

“
Damn!” he
said when the bubbly hopped over the escritoire and down one of its
legs – fizzing and exuberant. He was about to say he was sorry for
the
damn
when Lily’s giggle cut him off. He grinned
boyishly, then stared at her, puzzled but powerfully
attracted.

“
What do we
toast?” Lily said.

“
Well, that
Dowling fellow told me they’re going to name the village where the
station is after me: Point Edward. In my honour.”

“
Some honour,”
Lily said, lifting her glass.

He hesitated,
gazed at her, then released his mirth, spilling champagne on his
shirt. “Some honour, indeed.
Some
village: a
hostelry that would make a Montparnasse madam blush and a row of
rundown navvy’s huts.”

“
And it’s not
even your name,” Lily said.

He laughed again. “To Point
Albert, then!” he said merrily.

They clinked glasses,
marvelling that each struck the self-same note – high and sweetly
diminuendo. The Prince, a bit hastily perhaps, filled the glasses
again. Lily got up and took a step towards the door.

“
Please don’t
go,” he said. “I just wanted to talk,” he added.
“Really.”

Lily paused, her back
still to him – the sunburnt, freckled skin of her neck, the
undisguised calluses on her palms reminding him that she was no
mere chatelaine. “I get so sick of all that polite chatter, all
that hypocritical handshaking and endless palaver about the weather
and the crops and the engines of progress, and –”

“
Are you gonna
help me?” Lily said jauntily.

“
And here I
am, only...twenty,” he lied.

Lily took a step backwards and
the Prince, using all eighteen and three quarters of his years to
maintain his composure, moved up and began to unhook her dress.
“Thank you,” she said when he had finished. She drew her arms out
of the liberated sleeves, then let the vast folds descend
gratefully over the layered crinolines. “Help me get these cages
off,” she laughed, and joining in the game, he hoisted them over
her head and let them clatter to the floor where they rolled away
like lopsided tankards.

“
I hope you
don’t mind the informality, Your Highness,” she said. “Back home,
this is the way we dress, proper.” And she sat down again clad in
her full-length muslin slip, stockings and camisole that might have
been mistaken for a simple housedress in the less cosmopolitan
confines of the province.

The Prince tried to take in all
of this blemished beauty – the burned-flaxen hair irreconciled to
ringlets, the rough-tender hands, the freckled buff of cheek, her
flecked hazel-green eyes, the timidity and jut of each movement,
the unawakened wonder of poised womanhood – but he was eighteen not
twenty, and he lit up another cigar.

“
Shall I open
the window?” he offered.

“
No, please.
Smoke don’t bother me none. I like it.” It wasn’t pipe-smoke in a
wigwam, but it would do.

He puffed and temporized,
casting sideways glances in her direction, like a puritan at a peep
show. Lily finished her champagne. She poured herself a third
glass, emptying the bottle. Just as well, the ice had wilted. The
second that the valet had touched her arm she had known what was
expected of her. She had followed him in full knowledge. She put
down her empty glass, rose, and pulled the cigar from between the
Prince’s teeth. She dropped it in its gold groove, the live end
white-hot. She grasped the young man’s hands in her own, surprised
at their fleshiness. He raised up, then watched her back over to
the bed, sit for a second, then stretch languidly across the
comforter. Her shoes struck the floor with a do-or-die ring.

Lily closed
her eyes. Yes, she thought, it’s time to act, to make something
happen,
anything
. She heard
the rustle and clink of His Highness at the extreme edge of
dishabillement. She reached down and drew her slip, then her
camisole over her head, feeling the rush of air on her nakedness
like a lover’s breath. She looked out at the world.

The Prince was
arched over her, pale and trembling, his muscled alabaster flesh as
vulnerable and omnipotent as a Lancelot stripped of armour. Lily
assessed the reticence and the lust in
his eyes, and blessed them both.