The Age of Water Lilies (11 page)

The summer had gone on forever; that was how it seemed now. The flats above the river rippled with heat, and the willows along its banks trilled with kingbirds. Because of the settlement's altitude, evenings cooled off so that sleeping was pleasant in the screened rooms. Flora set up a bed for herself on the second-storey porch, draping it with a length of netting hung from a hook in the ceiling so she would not be troubled by mosquitoes in the early hours of the morning. She dreamed of meeting Gus among the trees, something she had done whenever possible. If she couldn't arrange to ride away, she'd walk to the farthest orchard grove, the one with tall tobacco plants between the rows of apple trees. In that long summer, she had taken to wearing as few underclothes as possible to make it easier to make love with him during their meetings. The first time he reached under her muslin skirt and realized she was bare-legged and clad only in a light envelope chemise, buttoned where it met between her legs, he laughed aloud. She loved his laugh. It held nothing back. And she, too, held nothing back on the days when they met among the trees and the tall grass, unbinding her hair and opening her mouth for his kisses. She had opened her mouth to his body too, each and every part, delighting in the textures upon her tongue—the rough skin of his knees, the velvet of his upper thigh. His shoulders tasted of salt. Who among her family and friends would have known this young woman, ardent and eager for the weight of one particular man upon her breasts? She had come to life, as plain trees quicken in spring, dressed in blossom and leaf.

The picnics with the other settlers had been lovely on the long hot summer afternoons after the men had departed. A wagon organized, food packed into baskets, one of the older men going on ahead by horseback to light a fire so that the children might roast potatoes in the coals. A small lake in the hills above the river might serve as a destination, or else the wagon would take the group to one of the gravel flats by the river, preferably one with shallows to allow for wading. Hampers were placed in the shadows cast by cottonwoods, paraffin stoves lit so urns of tea could be made, and beaded thermos flasks of lemonade were propped in the shallows of river or lake, protected by a small wall of stones. Children ran in the sunlight, their faces brown and freckled, while their mothers sat under parasols, some of them boldly removing their shoes.

Some families had returned to England, the husbands to regiments they were affiliated with in the home country, the families to wait out the war in familiar surroundings. They had been in such a hurry in August to return that some of them left entire households of furnishings, hopeful that the war would be finished by Christmas and they could return for the spring blossoms. Gus's horses were left in the care of a man who could not enlist due to persistent lung trouble. Flora would see them in the pasture, their lovely heads lifting as she gave them the whistle that Gus had taught her. Putting her face against Flight's neck was as close as she could get to the body of her beloved.

Mary was wiping the work table in the kitchen when Flora came in to pour herself a glass of water. She turned to Flora and met her eyes. In an instant, Flora realized that Mary knew of her condition. She dropped her glass on the floor and let out a small anguished cry. Mary put her cloth down and took Flora in her arms. There was a faint smell of smoke in her clothing, not unpleasant, and a firm support in her shoulders as Flora wept, then drew back to smile uncertainly. Mary continued to rub her neck, her shoulders, smoothing her hair with rough hands.

“How foolish you must think me, Mary. You've had enough babies to take it calmly, yet I am like one of the quail, silly and skittish. And for something as natural as having a baby.”

“It will not be easy for you, Missus. I have Agrippa and he is not leaving for the war.”

TEN

April 1962

Tessa's mother was feeding bark to the wood burner in the kitchen. “How is Miss Oakden?” she asked as she angled a particularly large piece of bark into the opening of the stove.

“She's fine. She sent matrimonial squares for the boys,” Tessa replied, putting the package wrapped in waxed paper on the counter. “They got a bit squished because I rode my bike through the cemetery before I came home. What's for supper?”

“Macaroni and cheese. Your brothers have Little League, so we're eating later than usual. Set the table, please.”

Tessa took the melmac plates from the cupboard and went to the dining room to put them around. The cloth was already laid; the napkins were kept on the sideboard, each in its own silver ring, gifts from their grandmother in New Brunswick. Once a week the napkins were washed when Tessa's mother did the laundry in the basement where the washing machine was set up beside two deep sinks of soapstone. When Tessa helped her mother feed the sheets through the wringer, she always took care to keep her fingers away from the rollers because a boy (a friend of a friend of a friend) had his arm drawn in by mistake. His bones were all crushed and never healed properly. That boy's hand still hung by his side, useless, all because he hadn't been careful enough. On the days when laundry was done, Tessa loved going to bed because she would have a fresh top sheet and pillowcase, both of them smelling of the wind. Last week's top sheet would have been shaken outdoors and then carefully tucked over the mattress to act as the bottom. You never got two fresh sheets unless you had an accident. Once, Tessa had dreamed she was trying to get to a toilet; in a panic, she kept trying every door to discover which one opened to the bathroom; each led to a hall, a broom closet, the stairwell to the basement. When she finally found the right door and sat on the toilet, the relief as she peed was wonderful. Waking, she'd wondered at first why her bed was damp. Then, in horror, she remembered her dream. She quickly got up, stripped her bed and took the sheets downstairs to pile by the washing machine, her pyjamas tucked inside them. She entered the kitchen, fully dressed though it was not yet seven, the time her mother usually called her to get up.

“I've already taken my sheets down,” she told her mother, “so you won't have to do it.”

“But, honey, this isn't washing day!” her mother exclaimed, starting to say something else, then thinking better of it. Tessa realized later that her mother must've known she'd peed her bed but didn't get angry with her. But she herself worried that it might happen again, that she might become a bed-wetter—a girl in her school was teased for this very reason and couldn't go to Brownie camp because she would pee her sleeping bag and there weren't washing facilities to deal with the accident. After her own accident, Tessa would wake herself up early to make sure her bed was dry. She began to swish only a tiny bit of water in her mouth after brushing her teeth in case the glass of water she usually drank at bedtime was the reason she had peed her bed. But it didn't happen again. Still, it was something to remember and worry over.

Once she'd set the table, she went to the window looking out onto Eberts Street. The sky was deep blue with pink across the horizon. The trees stood out like black paper cutouts. On Bushby Street, Tessa could see the headlights of a car illuminating the road. The car proceeded so slowly that it seemed not to be moving at all. Perhaps there was a man driving and a woman watching for a particular address, her eyes squinting into the dusk to make out the numbers on the front of a house. The park across the road stood empty, its swings hanging still, the ball diamond waiting. In just five weeks, the evenings would be light enough for all the neighbourhood children to gather together in the park to decide on a game—to divide into sides if there were enough of them for baseball, hide-and-seek, daredevil on the swings. Tessa loved hide-and-seek the best, especially when it got to be dusk and long shadows were cast across the park by the monkey puzzle trees and the cedars. Then a girl could flatten herself against a shadow and not be seen until the seeker was almost on top of her (this happened once and she never forgot, it was that thrilling), then two girls could hide in scraggly privet bushes between the park and the backyard of a house angling over from Bushby Street, the smell of the privet bitter and sharp.

“We're starved! When's supper?”

Tessa's brothers, Mick and Teddy, bounded in. They were eleven and nine, loud and sweaty, having ridden their bikes from the school field where ball practice was held on spring afternoons. Their mother directed them to change their clothes and wash their hands. Supper was ready. It would just be the four of them tonight as their father had to work late at the Experimental Farm.

“Do you have a game on the weekend?” she asked, spooning macaroni and cheese onto each plate and adding a helping of salad. “Mick, will you pour milk, please? And carefully. I mean it. This is a clean tablecloth.”

“We play View Royal. Their field. Can Dad take us? And maybe Petey and John too?”

“We'll see.”

After supper, Mick and Teddy asked if they could go out to play with the other kids and were told yes, but to be back by eight.

“Are you going with them, Tessa?” asked their mother, beginning to wash the supper dishes in the old aluminium pan.

“They didn't ask me. But can I go across the road?”

Her mother nodded, and Tessa ran to put on her old runners. She also put her flashlight in her back pocket as it was dark in the shadows away from the streetlights. She was thinking of water, of the stream running underground through Bushby Park, meeting another arm of it coming down through the cemetery, just beyond the park, then trickling into the sea below the breakwater. Or this is what she had worked out so far. Maybe she could make a map of its route. They were learning about maps at school, and she liked figuring out things she knew in real life from the way they appeared on maps—the roads, the parks, one map even showing the Experimental Farm on Saanich Peninsula, indicated by a little row of trees. You couldn't see everything, of course, not the houses and the other buildings, not the cars on the Pat Bay Highway, or the fences, or the horses leaning over their rails at the farm across from Elk Lake. But you could imagine yourself here, enroute, matching the names on the map to the real places. You could almost imagine a train on the little tracks on the map that led up the Island to Nanaimo or boats in the expanses of water.

She lowered her body to the grass in the far corner of the park, checking for her flashlight first to make sure it was at the ready. Tall boards separated park from yards, and mint crept from the garden on the other side of the boards to flourish in the damp earth. This must be the stream, thought Tessa, this must be where it is underground because the grass is always wet here. Ruefully she rubbed at the damp patch on her dungarees. Her mother would not be happy; she'd only worn these pants for a day or two and already they were soiled. She thrust her head into the mint to listen.

Yes, she could almost hear the water. Or was it her own blood rushing around in her head? She listened. Water, she thought. And then was certain—it was gurgling and ringing. How far from the mint could she lie and still hear it? She backed up, on her knees, and then pressed her ear to the ground. It was like hearing rain, from a distance, a dripping, an echoing. She kept backing up, still listening, still hearing the water in its course under the park. All those days when the park had been crowded with children playing ball, hiding in the bushes, running races back and forth across the grass, a stream had been running under their feet. When Ricky Anderson pumped his swing higher and higher until it flipped over the bar from which the row of swings were suspended, Ricky falling with a great shout and a flailing of arms to the cement underneath and cracking his head open (you could still see the blood stain, a faint rust mark on the cement), the stream trickled underneath as the children screamed and various parents ran to help. It was something to think about, how water just kept on doing what it had always done, no matter the activity around it. And Tessa dug her fingers into the damp soil, feeling the tough stolons of mint criss-crossing just under the surface, eager to spread. She wondered if they followed the route of the creek, the small nubs of stems emerging from the soil like road signs, leaves unfurling, flagging the course of a hidden waterway.

Riding a bike along the quiet lanes in the cemetery, she thought about the fact that underneath the grass and tree roots were bodies, some of them skeletons by now, and the more recent burials still recognizable as people. Mick and Teddy knew more about this than she did, and they said worms and bugs ate the flesh until only bones were left. It took longer now that people were buried in special coffins, but that was what happened. As though to prove it, they buried two of Mick's hamsters—both died within three days of each other, of old age—in the backyard, one in a cigar box and one just wrapped in Kleenex. Four months later they dug them up. Most of the hamster wrapped in Kleenex was rotten, its skin and fur gone, with maggots everywhere, and most of the one in the cigar box was still in quite good condition, though the smell made Tessa throw up by the compost heap. They had conducted a little run of burials then—birds that had broken their necks flying into the window, a squirrel run over near the breakwater, jellyfish washed to shore and stranded in the sun. Even Tessa had been buried in the sand under the monumental works, her head sticking out so she could breathe. Her brothers told her she would have to stay there until she died. She remained perfectly still, trying not to worry. She could hear her heart thumping through the sand, her pulse racing in her neck in time to her heart. Was it possible to be buried alive, in sand or in a coffin? How long would it take to die? Panic began in her chest, the flutter of her heart racing. Her feet felt numb. She had to pee. She could hear the men in the building above her and supposed if she screamed, someone would come down and help her. But then children might be forbidden to play in the monumental yard. Or her mother might be told and then she would be in big trouble. Just when she thought she would have to give up and pee into the sand (which had already begun to smell of cat), she heard her brothers laughing as they returned for her, Teddy digging her out with a piece of board and Mick pulling her by the arms until she stood up, her knees shaking. They knew she wouldn't tell.