Swamp Angel (7 page)

Mrs. Mordy did not care for Vera who resembled herself, being slight, pale, dark and thin-faced. She worshiped Surl who resembled in form a Greek god who happened to inhabit western Canada. Surl grew up into undeserved beauty, heroic in form but in nothing else, and crowned with a thick and strong tawny mop of curling hair. There was one thing about his face that was peculiar. His eyelids were set a little low across his eyes, and when he looked at a person, he looked not at the eyes of that person but at that person’s lower lids, from under his own lids. This gave his look a slightly sensual yet bashful cast and, later, was a source of excitement to young girls, and
older ones too, who saw something personal in this curious regard which did not mean a thing and was simply a physical characteristic. Surl was no good.

This kind of life did not make Vera a happy girl. It is well known that young people need and love love, and Vera did not receive love, unless you could call the lazy tolerance of her father “love.” Her mother’s partiality for Surl caused Vera’s face often to have a bitchy look.

One day Mr. Mordy stood in his shack doorway holding a sack filled with various objects. The base of the sack rested on the floor.

He said to his wife, “I’m going in to Kamloops. I’ll send for you and the kids when I get fixed up with a job of work.” He then lifted the sack over his shoulder, turned, and lumbered off to an old jalopy which had stopped first at the store where Mr. Mordy had happened to be that morning. The driver who was a commercial traveler of sorts started up the engine, Mr. Mordy clambered in, and Mrs. Mordy – standing at the shack door – saw the car bump into the distance. She had begun by calling after the car and saying all sorts of things, but that was useless.

Mrs. Mordy and Surl and Vera continued to subsist for some months at Table Grande until, greatly to Mrs. Mordy’s surprise, a message really did come from her husband stating that he had a job with the City (it was in the garbage) and that she and the children could now come to Kamloops as soon as they liked. He did not suggest how they should get there.

When they at last arrived at Kamloops, Vera looked at the people and was much ashamed of her ignorance and her shabbiness and not only hers, but of the ignorance and shabbiness of the whole family. She experienced, however, together with this recurring shame, a feeling of strange happiness
which was really the feeling of hope and opportunity. The bitchy look was seldom on her face. She watched the other girls and soon became a fair imitation of a nice neat young girl. She presented herself at one of the schools and in an awkward manner told her story and said she needed some education. She was advised very kindly and joined a night-school class which was for the benefit of foreign immigrants who wished to learn to read and write. She progressed fast. She moved on to other classes and before long became a fair imitation of an ordinarily badly educated young girl. Because she was not happy by nature (circumstances had arranged that) she was a little apt to have trifling growing jealousies of other girls, and only policy prevented her from showing the resentments she sometimes felt. She consumed these jealousies in secret, somewhat enjoying them. Otherwise she deserved a great deal of credit. Surl – aided by his phenomenal good looks – took to bad company, narrowly escaped a bit of trouble, and left town. Mr. Mordy was for the first time in his life in a position of some solvency and comfort. He then perversely took pneumonia and died. Vera had inherited her father’s weak chest (there was nothing else to inherit) and was subject to colds and bronchitis.

After Mr. Mordy’s death Vera and her mother lived uncongenially together but Vera, no longer limited by life on the stump ranch, did not mind. She had a nice job as a waitress in a Greek restaurant on the main street. It was an old-time restaurant run by a Greek called Caesar who was good to his girls. His customers were chiefly ranchers and their families from out of town, commercial travelers and cowboys. Some were rough customers and some were not, but Caesar would take no nonsense for his girls. Later, a friend of Vera’s who worked in a large store told her that there was a job going
in women’s hosiery. Vera, hesitating a little, left the restaurant and took the job.

Since Surl had departed he had written twice to his mother. The second time he gave an address which was the Hotel Del Roxy. This fancy address pleased Mrs. Mordy very much and gave her the idea of going to Vancouver to join Surl at the Hotel Del Roxy. Vera gladly gave her the fare, and Mrs. Mordy set off.

When Mrs. Mordy arrived at the hotel which was a mean-looking joint, she did not seem able to find Surl and it was only by chance that she discovered that he was working as a waiter in the beer parlor. Surl was only moderately pleased to see her. The hotel was in the east end of the city and it is strange to think that Surl had no curiosity about the rest of the city of Vancouver – about its magnificent park, its fine beaches, its pleasant houses, its flourishing businesses both large and small, its elegant suspension bridge, and its mountain trails. The radius of four or five blocks of comparative squalor surrounding the Del Roxy Hotel suited Surl well and he had already formed dubious intimacies and occupations. As far as Mrs. Mordy was concerned, she sometimes sank and sometimes swam in Vancouver, but she did not return to Kamloops.

When the war came there was a shortage of male help everywhere and that included the store where Vera worked. Vera was therefore promoted to the Gents’ Furnishings department as the two young gents who usually sold furnishings to other gents had gone to the war. In the evenings, twice a week, Vera went with her best friend to the Services’ Club which was run by some hardworking philanthropic and patriotic women on behalf of the men stationed temporarily in and around Kamloops. The club was well run and only girls of good character were permitted to go there and act as hostesses
and dancing partners for the men in uniform. It was there that Vera met a man called Haldar Gunnarsen.

Haldar was a good fellow and undoubtedly attractive in his dark way. He had recently been promoted to sergeant, and it was nice for Vera that Sergeant Gunnarsen danced with her, invited her to shows, and at last asked her to marry him. Vera was almost pitifully excited, because Haldar was the first solid man to pay her attention. He became the sole object of her thoughts and hopes. Other people were surprised at Haldar’s choice because Vera was not nearly as attractive as many other girls who went to the Services’ Club and would gladly have married Sergeant Gunnarsen. It is impossible to know why Haldar asked Vera to marry him. It was partly propinquity no doubt, and partly because one night, under the garish lights outside the Zenith Movie House, Vera had looked up at him with a dog’s adoration, and he adopted her, like a dog, that very evening. Once adopted, Haldar was good to her although – on the whole – he was not much interested in women.

Vera hoped never to leave Kamloops. In the nighttime she looked forward to Haldar’s return from overseas where “They” would no doubt send him, and planned to make a certain two rooms that she knew of very homey and pleasant. It never entered her mind that anyone – certainly not Haldar who came from the prairies – would ever wish to leave a town and go and live in the backwoods. She had not reckoned with Haldar.

We never really know each other before marriage, do we. How could Vera tell that before ever she had met her husband, a man had taken him fishing on a week-end’s leave. They had driven about twenty miles into the hills beyond Kamloops, and then they had walked along a forest trail to a lake which was but little known. The fishing was excellent. The man had
said that the lake belonged to old Adams but that old Adams had died and the estate was being settled and the place could be had for a song. He also said he’d kind of like to buy it himself but what would he do with a lake I ask you.

Haldar Gunnarsen on his next short leave went to see the agents for the property and paid a deposit. He called his lake Three Loon Lake because there had been three loons on it when he was up there. He was partial to the loon as a bird. During his years overseas his spare time was to be spent in dreaming of the lake and of the building he would do at the lake. He would someday live there. He really spent more of his spare time in planning about the lake than in thinking about Vera although he was fairly faithful to her.

Haldar’s suggestion of marriage (“What say we get married, you and me?”) was quickly followed by the wedding because there were rumors that the battalion was about to go overseas. What with the fluster of getting married, which was secondary entirely to the step-up of work in the battalion previous to entraining for the East, Haldar had never even mentioned Three Loon Lake to Vera. This was unintentional but a good thing. It would have been a pity for Vera to spend three and a half years dreading and combatting the idea of moving into the backwoods again; but that was what was lying in wait for her.

When Haldar returned safe home from the war and Vera became Mrs. Gunnarsen in fact, she was filled with happiness. Their association had been brief before; but now, day by day, in becoming settled in their home, they seemed to have a real union and much happy married secret give-and-take of the kind that neither Vera nor Haldar had known before but which had been born of their living together. Vera was elevated in her own esteem when, in speaking to strangers, Haldar referred
to his wife as Mrs. Gunnarsen (“Mrs. Gunnarsen and I are going up to the lake.” Can this be I?); and she in her turn referred to her husband as Mr. Gunnarsen (“Mr. Gunnarsen can’t bear sprouts so I never buy them”). This seemed to establish them soundly. Mrs. Gunnarsen became pregnant. When her boy was born, she thought proudly that he resembled his father, and was glad. A continuing feeling of personal inferiority made her conscious of some social and physical lack and, of course, she was watchful and correct in this. Fortunately for her, Surl and Mrs. Mordy had dropped quite out of her life. She could not have endured their intrusion into the life of Mr. and Mrs. Gunnarsen.

E
arly on the day that Maggie Lloyd started up the Fraser Canyon the weather was lowering; then the great black clouds withdrew and revealed blue sky between the mountains. Maggie stood for a few minutes on the brink of the Fraser River. This formidable river rushed past the village of Hope at great speed, boiling as it rushed on. This boiling was strangely maintained in a flat yellow opaque surface. A sinister thing about this river at this place and season, Maggie thought, was that for all its force, it was silent. There was no discernible sound. The dangerous silent Fraser: the dancing Similkameen River. Maggie turned away and took her place in the bus.

The woman who sat down beside her said “It’s certny a wonderful day.”

Maggie turned to respond. The woman beside her had wide unblinking china-blue eyes. “My,” she said, “I’m prett’ near dead! My mother and her sister-in-law’s cousin had to come up from Vancouver last night of all times and me getting off to Boston Bar this morning And it isn’t as if I even know her cousin She comes from Buffalo and I wasn’t ever in Buffalo
in all my life So I said to my husband Well I had this all planned before they so much as thought of coming and Gerty’s expecting me and he said Well I must say the least they could of done was give a bit of warning and I said Well they gave warning all right if you can call telephoning in the morning warning I don’t and I said to my husband what I can do I can leave stuff in the house and tomorrow they’ll just
haff
to do things for themselves and my husband said Well that’s okay by me because his people had been up the week before Seems if you live in a place like Hope people seem to think you have nothing to do but have visitors up from in town and I said to my husband Well I’ll be back by supper tomorrow so I just came away and I must say I never did such a thing before You live in Vancouver?” All this was said without a break and Maggie felt sure that there was plenty more.

“No,” said Maggie after a moment’s hesitation.

“Going up country?” said the woman.

“Yes,” said Maggie (what do you suppose? she thought).

“That a fishing pole?”

“Yes.”

“You fish? Yourself, I mean?”

“Yes, I love it,” said Maggie.

“Well say! I guess your husband fishes?”

Maggie hesitated. “Yes,” she said. Dear Tom, casting, perhaps, with a crystal fly for a quick jade fish in some sweet stream of heaven.

“Well,” said the woman, “that’s one thing I can’t take – fishing. If you want to have your home look nice you can’t have men clumping in and out with dirty boots on One time my husband brought fish home and I said Well if you want me to cook those fish you can clean them yourself and he did and by the time he finished there was fish all over the house
there was scales in the new broadloom and I do declare there was scales in the drapes How he did it I don’t know So if he goes fishing now he just cleans his fish in the woodshed and takes and brings them in cleaned in his stocking feet …”

Maggie amiably paid her debt to society. “Yes,” she said, and “No?” and “Oh!” The stream flowed on.

“You been to Boston Bar?” said the woman, not waiting for an answer. “It’s just a small place – railway – Gerty that’s my friend her husband works on the railway and it seems like he always works nights. That’s one thing about my husband he works days I said to Gerty I don’t know how you can take it him working nights and Gerty said it gets her nervous him always coming in different shifts And the trains I guess you gotta take your living where you find it but I always say if you got your interests I got a broadloom for our living room last Fall and …” a thought seemed to call her back.

“There’s one thing I
will
say,” said the woman, “I did leave bread and pies and no one can beat my bread and pies You a cook?”

“Yes.”

“Perfessional?”

“Well … yes … in a way.”

“Going to a job?”

Maggie became deaf. She looked out of the window past which fled the young green of spring, dark firs, small waterfalls; then a turn of the road brought near the narrowing Fraser River, noisy here, beating madly against rock sides. She would see each leaf, each stone, each brown trunk of a tree, but she would not listen any more.