Lily's Story (36 page)

“
I’m Lily
Marshall.”

“
When he gets his tongue
untied,” said Uncle Chester, “he’ll tell you his name’s Jimmy
Millar, won’t you, Jimmy?”

“
From Moore Township?” Lily
said.

“
They got a lumber trail
now goes from Black Creek here straight west to the big river,”
said Uncle Chester into the sudden silence.

Jimmy Millar even remembered the day when
Lil and Papa left, though he was only eight years old and hiding
behind his mother’s apron as they stood at the end of civilization
and perhaps envied father-and-daughter as they headed north to
cities and roads and talk of railways. Urged on by Lily’s soft but
insistent questioning, Jimmy Millar related the details –
embellished by local legend – of the deaths of Maman LaRouche and
the Frenchman.

“
Some of the boys’re still
there,” Jimmy went on, on his own. “But the place is a mess. They
mostly hire out for booze money. None of ’em got married. Luc
sometimes lives with a squaw. Madeleine died.”

For a moment Jimmy did not
understand Lily’s next question. “Oh,
them
,” he said, as light flooded in.
“That squatters’ camp broke up right after you left. The government
opened up those back lots and Old Samuels an’ his brood just melted
into the trees. Nobody’s seen or heard of ’em since.”

Lily didn’t respond.

“
What about you,” Jimmy
said. “How’s your Pa doin’?”

“
He’s dead,” Lily said,
knowing deep down this was not a lie.

T
om and the others
came into view. Uncle Chester lay snoozing in the shade.
Armbruster’s voice reached her. “And this is just the part that
pays the bills, Tom my boy, the real bonanza’s in the deep-drilling
rig we’re moving in next week. Yessir, we’re going as far down into
that rock as we can ’cause there’s an ocean of oil just waiting
there to make us all millionaires. If I was you, I’d talk turkey to
that Aunt of yours in London. A little capital’s all you
need.”

Tom
was nodding his head politely. Aunt
Bridie was walking between them. She seemed so much smaller than
the men.

“W
hat’s the matter?”
Tom said, rolling into the feathery shadows of their afternoon
bed.

“
Nothin’,” Lily
said, leaning over him and planting a series of frantic little
kisses along his great chest and massive shoulders. “Nothin’ you
can’t cure.”

And she sighed extravagantly as
he gripped her breasts and eased her towards acceptance.

Nothing
you
can
cure, she thought sadly, her loving of him
trebled by that awful knowledge.

7

A
unt Bridie looked
right at her and said, “You want to know
why
. Well, you’ve
got a right to.”

They were alone in the ‘sitting
room’, the men having gone off to try their luck at the casino two
doors down. “Men need their toys,” Auntie had said as she closed
the door after them.

“
Not really,”
Lily replied, “if you don’t want to tell –” She waited for her Aunt
to move away from the window and sit down on the divan beside her.
“I’m so happy I guess I just wanna make sure everybody else has a
share.”

Aunt Bridie appeared to be
trying to recall something important, then brightened and said,
“Yes. You’ve always been like that. That’s why Chester an’ me feel
like we do about you.”

“
Then…”

“
Why did we up
an’ leave you?”

“
Not that. I
left you, remember.”

Aunt Bridie was fiddling with
the tassel on the oversize drapes. “We never felt that,” she said
softly. “We knew why you went. It came near to breakin’ Chester’s
heart when he found out. But it saved him, too, in a way. All
through that horrible business with the railroad, he was a great
strength to me. Imagine that. ‘Lily’s comin’ back,’ he’d say.
‘She’ll need a home more than ever now.’ An’ so I got mad, madder
than I’ve been for a long time.” She peeked over at Lily and forced
a thin smile.

“
At the
railroad.”

“
An’ the
damned government and all the petty do-gooders that made my life
hell since I been a girl. So when they come an’ took what all of us
built up with our sweat an’ bones for ten years, I must tell you,
Lily dearest, I was about ready to call it quits. When I saw that
Grand Trunk man drive those red stakes into our land, I felt like
they were enterin’ my heart an’ splittin’ it in a dozen pieces. If
it hadn’t been for Chester an’ they thought of you sufferin’ down
there in London, I don’t know what I’d've done. I really don’t.”
Her voice, always so strong and clear, shook with the memory of
those weeks.

“
Auntie,” Lily
said, reaching out.

Bridie was not to be
forestalled. “So when Chester’s friend in London suggested we pack
our bags an’ take all our savings an’ make the craziest gamble of
our lives, I took about thirty seconds to make up my mind.
Chester’s still shakin’, as you can see.”

“
But all
this,” Lily said carefully, “is so new an’ different from what
you’re used to. This place, these…people.”

Aunt Bridie smiled. “You mean
Mel,” she said.

“
No, not just
–”

“
Lily, you’re
almost as smart as your Auntie. And as dumb, thank the
Lord.”

“
But all this
–”

“
Phoniness an’
sin an’ greed? It’s just another version of livin’. Remember,
before I was a farmer an’ fruit vendor, I was a housemaid, an’
before that a rebel daughter who gave up her family an’ her country
with less than a night’s thought. When I married your Uncle
Chester, I knew less about him than you do about Tom.”

The mellowing late-afternoon
sun flowed into the room and around them. Bridie was still
talking.

“
When you see
Fate comin’ down on you, there’s nothin’ you can do, Lily, but get
out of its way before it crushes you, an’ hope there’s one more run
at the world somewhere else. A body can only fight so long without
winnin’. After a while you’re not a fighter, you’re a
fool.”

Lily was only half-listening.
She was thinking how fragile a thing the human heart was, whatever
flesh or will or faith pretended to represent its spirit.

“
Pardon?”

“
I say you’ll
come an’ live with us again?”

“
Here?”

“
Not right
here, of course. As soon as the big well comes in, your Uncle an’
me we’ll build a cottage on the outskirts, with trees and a garden.
A flower garden.”

“
We ain’t made
any real plans yet,” Lily said.

“
Don’t you
worry about Mel now,” Aunt Bridie said. “There’s a good man under
all that blarney. I know. I’m Irish, remember?”

“
I’m sure
there is,” Lily said.

“
All I’m
askin’ is for you to talk it over with Tom. There’s plenty of work.
Lots of opportunity for a man of his upbringin’.”

“
I’ll talk to
him,” Lily said, catching the strange look in her Aunt’s eye and
searching for the source of some thought or feeling that fought to
stay hidden there.

“
Tell him you
gotta take chances in this world,” Bridie went on in the same
tone.

Lily crossed
the room and took her Aunt by the arm. Bridie tensed.
“
But you left me the
deed
,” Lily said.

Bridie gave a wry smile full of
tenderness and doubt. Then she stared out at the setting sun. Some
time later she whispered, “It wasn’t for you.”

“
Oh –” Lily
said. Then she put her arms around her Aunt and held her as she
might her own daughter. Bridie’s body shrank, then the tears came,
irregular and fugitive, not so much the release of pent emotion as
a gentle questing for some feeling almost beyond
remembrance.

“
There’ll be
another one,” Lily said. “Soon. I promise.”

14

1

A
lthough they lived on
the far edge of the new village, shielded from it by the last rows
of aboriginal forest, Lily and Tom felt their lives growing in
parallel with it.

Very soon
after their return from a week with Mrs. Edgeworth, now Aunt
Elspeth,
Tom took up his job
with the Grand Trunk and settled into a daily routine that Lily
wished to go on forever. Each morning just as the sun reached the
tree-line and their cockerel reannounced his lustiness, Lily
detached herself carefully and reluctantly from the cocoon of
warmth she helped create with her lover’s body, and got a brisk
fire going in the stove. The kindling she had chopped the previous
afternoon snapped and thirsted after air. She would then pump the
kettle full – the autumn dews cool against her bare skin, the
hushed morning wordless with expectation – and having placed it
over the open flame, would slip into the bedroom again and watch
her husband’s face in its sleep. How pleasant it must be, she mused
(noting his limbs fret and unwind beneath the comforter) to be
wakened every morning by the crack of kindling, your home filling
with heat to welcome your rising, your wife with her kettle on and
bending down to bless your lips. She had to be quick, of course, or
the day’s natural timing would be set ajar; Tom, pawing his way out
of some dream or other, might ring her with his powerful arms – now
thickened by the hauling of hundred-pound kegs and sacks – and pull
her back into his lustful reverie. Beyond an initial cry of
surprise and protest, she made on these occasions no resistance,
for Tom’s loving would be slow and dream-like, drawing her down
into her own fantasia, and she was glad she’d had no one to tell
her exactly what love could or shouldn’t be. If Tom were somewhat
taken aback by her aggressiveness at night, he very soon adjusted
to it, and here in these improvised and illicit mornings they found
a mutual pace that left them both adrift, dreamful, awash in desire
without appetite. It was during one of these sessions late in
September on a misty Sunday morning that Lily unexpectedly broke
the spell and thrashed her way to a first, shuddering, eye-popping
climax.

“
Good
morning,” Tom said when he’d caught his breath and some of his
dignity.

Lily shut her eyes and clung to
his shoulders, letting the last wavelets of shame and ecstasy fend
for themselves. “Nobody told me about this,” she breathed against
him.

“
Me neither,”
Tom said. “And on a Sunday at that.”

She felt the laughter
rumble through his chest, and she hugged him, and marvelled at the
whimsicality of the world’s working.

E
xcept for Sundays,
she had learned to discipline herself to the point where Tom would
have to dissemble sleep as she started breakfast and then spring
like a lynx at her when she bent to watch him wake. She soon
learned, also, that a sudden giggle or a quick tickle under the
arms deflated his desires or the fancies that fed them, after which
they would tussle and cavort like a couple of cubs until one of
them toppled onto the cold floor and breakfast-and-work reasserted
their sober priorities.

Tom
liked a heavy breakfast, so Lily
cooked him back-bacon and eggs (provided by their own hens now),
then joined him for toast, jam and tea. She didn’t mind in the
least that he was often grumpy in the morning, as she was
accustomed to rising at dawn and found herself unable to contain
her humming and good cheer. Besides, she wasn’t eager to talk too
much over breakfast since one of her recurring fears was that they
would soon run out of things to say to one another, and barely a
month had passed since the wedding. Once, walking through the
oak-and-maple bush east of the house with the leaves crackling
underfoot, Tom had turned to her and said: “Lily darling, if you
and another just like you inherited the earth, there’d soon be no
talking left at all.” Aunt Bridie had been more blunt: “Child,
you’re about as gabby as a rabbit in shock.” But she was sure Tom
loved her precisely because she was such a good listener. After
supper or after a stroll through the woods on Sundays, he loved to
tell stories about his wild school-days, his escapades with Mad-Cap
Dowling and his ‘bunch’, or the absurdities of the characters he’d
encountered in the practice of law in Toronto. Not that he wouldn’t
try to prompt Lily herself to open up: “Why don’t you ever talk
about yourself? You don’t have to
tell me all
,” he would
laugh. “I just want to get to know as much of you as I can. Love is
sharing, isn’t it?” So, on neatly spaced occasions Lily would take
up the burden of story-telling, for that is how she conceived of
these exchanges before a blazing fire or sometimes after
early-evening love-making, with Tom puffing away at the clay pipe
Aunt Elspeth had given him. As she cast back for suitable material
she found herself selecting the happy, nostalgic events – her trips
to Port Sarnia to peddle her fruits and vegetables, the eccentric
Misses Baines-Powell, the boozy warmth of Char Hazelberry and her
girls Betsy and Winnie, Mrs. Templeton’s kindness, Bachelor Bill’s
antics. Moreover, she discovered that as she gathered momentum in
the wake of Tom’s encouragement, she was using voices and phrasings
– even cadence and intonation – that belonged more to others than
herself: Aunt Bridie, Bachelor Bill, Mrs. Templeton, Maman
LaRouche. Finally she realized that she was reliving these simple
events through a variety of lenses, so that they came out fresh,
droll and unscathed by repetition.