The Age of Water Lilies (32 page)

To hear these, and his brother: both true men,

Not yet among the stars
!

And the Chorus backed her up, telling Menelaus,
Be strong, O King . . . not weak, / But iron against the wrong!”

Yet the scene ended with the suggestion that Menelaus would take his wife back, into his arms, his heart. (Hecuba remarked,
A lover once, will always love again
.)

It was exhilarating for those in the wings to know they had the audience's complete attention. There was no rustling of programs, no unnecessary murmuring, and only a little coughing. During the burial scene of the infant Astyanax, put into earth on his father's shield, his grandmother Hecuba performed the rituals of purification, her words clear in the chilly air of the theatre.

All is gone.

How should a poet carve the funeral stone

To tell thy story true? ‘There lieth here

A babe whom the Greeks feared, and in their fear

Slew him.' Aye, Greece will bless the tale it tells.

Child, they have left thee beggared of all else

In Hector's house; but one thing shalt thou keep,

This war-shield bronzen-barred, wherein to sleep.

As the remnants of Troy were set ablaze (the second painted curtain quickly lowered in front of the first) and the Chorus chanted the final
Farewell . . . Forth to the Greek ships / And the sea's foaming,
the Indian women again performed their eerie song while the Trojan women left the stage to be distributed to their masters.

After the last notes of the rattles sounded, Nancy and Sara rose quietly and left the stage. The curtain fell. And the audience began a long and loud applause.

Backstage there was delighted and relieved laughing. Then, “Ann, they are calling for you!” and Agnes was leading Ann to the stage again to receive the applause and a sheaf of lilies the women had arranged to have delivered to the theatre. The cast joined her, and they stood for a brief period in the glow of lights and acclamation.

And still: “They are calling for you, Ann.” Seemingly without any kind of preparation, Ann stood with her sheaf of lilies, her simple gown hanging around her, and drew her shoulders back, her chest filling with air. Was Ann to sing then? And she opened her mouth. It was a song Flora recognized from Ann's repertoire, Dido's lament:

When I am laid, am laid in earth,

May my wrongs create no trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

When I am laid, am laid in earth,

May my wrongs create no trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

Remember me, remember me;

But ah! Forget my fate.

Remember me, but ah! Forget my fate.

Dido's words shimmered in the theatre, offered by Ann as a gift to the audience, a gift and a reminder.

“There is a message for you, Flora, as well as this big bouquet of roses.” Alice Ramsay put the flowers into Flora's arms and tucked a little envelope into her hand. Everyone was gathered in the largest of the dressing rooms, excitedly discussing the performance. Outside the door, family members waited, messages were passed back and forth between sisters and husbands and children, and someone had brought champagne to toast the cast.

“How lovely,” murmured Flora, burrowing her nose into the roses. “Who would be sending flowers to me? Robert Alexander, I suppose.”

She allowed Ann to take the roses from her so she could open her message. She read it, made a small cry, putting her hands to her cheeks, and then got up suddenly to run from the room.

“I wonder what that's all about?” asked Mary Morrison, as she began removing the heavy stage makeup that had already begun to run. “Perhaps Flora has an admirer!”

Flora ran to the side door of the theatre and looked into the crowd making its way along the sidewalk, scanning faces with such urgency. Yes, yes, there they were! They saw her at the same moment she located them in the crowd.

“Jane! Allan! Oh, how wonderful to see you!”

The two women embraced, tears running down their faces. Allan waited and then took his turn to embrace Flora. He held her for a long moment, patting her back, then releasing her to Jane again.

“We were very impressed with the play, Flora,” he told her. “Who would have known you were an actress as well as a ceramics artist?”

The McIntyres were staying at the Empress Hotel and had left their Thomas with a cousin of Allan's for the evening.

“May we take you back for a late supper?” asked Jane. “Then we can arrange to have the little ones meet, perhaps tomorrow. I'm dying to see Grace.”

Flora took Jane and Allan into the theatre by the side door and introduced them to Ann and the others. Ann insisted that she would return home to relieve Grace's minder and that Flora should go with her friends and have a meal with them. Quickly Flora put herself together, making certain that the cast did not mind her leaving them to clean up the dressing room she had shared with Ann and several members of the Chorus. She looked at the woman in the mirror, a little older than the girl who had first known Jane and shared stories of her coming out, her white dress and beaded slippers; Jane, the first person she had told about Gus: she saw the older Flora in the mirror, shadowed by the knowledge of Gus's death, her brothers' deaths, her father's death, Andromache hovering behind her like a ghost. She took up her coat and pocketbook and left the room.

•  •  •

Over a late supper of roast chicken and a bottle of hock, the two women filled each other in on the years of their separation while Allan sat quietly, adding a mild sentence from time to time.

“And will you come to us over the summer? We could sew again under the spreading cottonwood—I still have my bodice, you know, although it would not fit me now—and the children could play or ride with Allan. After Grace has found her seat of course. And think of the picnics we could have down on Oregon Jack Creek!”

“We'd love to, Jane, if you're certain. I know that my situation is . . . well, irregular and might cause you some embarrassment.”

“I hope you're not serious? Of course we're certain! Why on earth would you think otherwise?”

“My mother never refers to Grace in her letters and so I know that she, for one, is sensitive about my unmarried state of motherhood. Gus's mother won't see us, though his father has been a tower of strength and love. I know that some in Walhachin would not be pleased to see me. And I would understand your reluctance to have us come when you know the train would stop in Ashcroft where you are so well known and thought of.”

Jane and Allan both laughed. They began to speak at the same time: “Flora, do not even consider . . .” “Nonsense, Flora . . .”

Allan let Jane continue. “You are a beautiful and accomplished woman, Flora, and you have a daughter with a proud name. Your mother has cut off her nose to spite her face, it seems to me. And I know that Grace's father would delight in every inch of her.”

“Bless you both,” said Flora quietly. “I don't feel the stigma here any longer because Ann has been so supportive that many other women simply wouldn't dare to shun me.”

At this point, Allan mildly interrupted. “I know they have a most delicious apple charlotte if I can interest the two of you?”

As they nodded, he said to the waiter, “Three portions of apple charlotte, please. And I think three glasses of your finest port to go with it.”

•  •  •

“There is a review in today's
Colonist
,” said Ann as Flora came in from tea with Jane and Allan, two days after the performance.

“And . . . ?” Flora was removing Grace's coat and hanging it, putting her hat on its hook, and smoothing her child's hair with one hand while she unfastened the buttons of her own coat with the other. She looked expectantly to Ann, who was holding the newspaper open as she greeted them.

Ann reached down to give Grace a kiss. “First, will you tell me about your tea, Grace? Did you like Thomas?”

“He has a pony, Ann. And he says I might ride it if we go to visit. I'm going to draw a pony now.” Grace ran to her room where paper and pencil waited to receive this new dream.

“So—do tell, Ann! Have we been praised or condemned?”

“It's quite positive, on the whole. You are cited as dignity personified for the way you portrayed Andromache. He didn't quite see the point of Sara and Nancy, but we knew that would probably be the case. He does see the point of Greek tragedy, though, and that's something for which we can be grateful. Let me read you that part. ‘A Greek tragedy was a religious experience in the form of a ceremonial, a ceremonial, moreover, which was not the affair of the actors merely, but of everyone who was present at it. There was in it, accordingly, what will be found in no modern tragedy, even the greatest: the rhythm of a high experience, rising with the natural inevitability of rhythm from the beginning, reaching the summit of exaltation, and ending at the last in calm. The form here perfectly expresses the inspiration.'”

“Well, that's something, isn't it? Anything about the staging? The others?”

“He is quite kind. He has good words for Mary and her beauty and her presence. And he admires my Hecuba, saying that her laments are uttered not by her precisely but by humanity through her. I thought that very perceptive and of course I wonder how this person has been allowed to say these things in print, in a newspaper not known for its pacifist views. But we can be grateful for this in any case.”

“And who is he?”

“I don't know. He signs himself Didascalia, which is perhaps a little coy—I believe that was the process of teaching drama to the Chorus by the playwright? But he is obviously familiar with this play and with its tradition as well as the other performances. For instance, he seems to have attended at least one of the Granville-Barker productions with the marvellous Lillah McCarthy, though he doesn't say which one. Anyway, we haven't been drawn and quartered, not yet, and judging from the cards that have arrived in today's post—you'll see them on the mantel, Flora, just there—there are some in this city who feel as we do. Though I fear they are almost all, to a writer, women.”

They continued to talk about the play. It had taken up so much of their time, it was hard to believe it was over. There had been several unpleasant phone calls to say that women had no right to question the patriotic requirement of men to serve their King and country or that the
cef
were hardly a pillaging army, taking women as their slaves. As Ann observed, subtlety was lost on some. They waited for what they hoped would be a ground-swell of support for their message, but Ann reminded Flora that this might take longer than they hoped.

Flora told Ann about her second visit with Jane and Allan, how warmly they treated Grace, and how charming was their young Thomas.

“They've asked that Grace and I visit them this summer and you know, Ann, I think we will. I don't imagine I would care to return to Walhachin, having left in a cloud of disgrace! That won't be forgotten, or forgiven. But it would be lovely to spend a week or two at the McIntyre Ranch. You won't feel we've abandoned you?”

“Of course not, Flora! Not as long as you both return!”

THIRTY

1962

“Your dad has some news, kids.” The three children looked up from their pork chops and Minute Rice, a favourite weekday supper. Their father was smiling from his place at the head of the table, his napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt (he was notoriously messy with his food).

“Well, it's good news, kids. At least I think it's good news. I've been given a new job, one which I applied for and never thought I'd get! Doing research in field corn and peas, at the Morden Research Centre in Manitoba. It's a chance to really dig into the diseases that affect our food crops and I'm awfully happy to have this opportunity.”

“Manitoba, Dad? Are you serious?”

“Yeah, completely serious, Teddy.”

“That's pretty cool. When are we going?”

“Well, they want me in the new year. So the plan is, we'll have Christmas here and then head away just after. It's a long drive—your mother and I figure it will take us about five days, depending on weather. But an adventure, I think, and a change for us all.”

Tessa was completely quiet.
Manitoba?
She knew it from the maps she'd been looking at. One over from Saskatchewan.
Three
over from British Columbia. Which was where they
lived,
where their home was. How could her parents think of moving? And was it forever? What would happen to their house?

She slipped away from the table and went into her room to think about it. She couldn't think with everyone else talking and Mick and Teddy giving each other high-fives. She lay on her bed in the dark and closed her eyes. She saw the cemetery, the trees all covered in spring growth, ground dotted with daisies. Little birds entering the dark centres of trees where their nests were concealed from the crows who patrolled in groups, loud and energetic as boys in a schoolyard.

And what about school? She couldn't say she'd miss her teacher. Some of the kids, yes. She'd made one close friend this year, Melody Sangster, who lived on the other side of the Moss Rocks. When Tessa visited her after school one day, she discovered that Melody's mum had a job and her father stayed home. He had a condition, Tessa wasn't sure what it was, but it made him too nervous to work. It was odd but not unpleasant to be served milk and cookies by a father for a change, and he let them fasten wax paper to their feet with strips of soft cloth so they could skate up and down the wooden floors of the long hall. So she'd have to leave Melody. And the Godwins. And Miss Oakden and her tree frogs. When she thought of this, she got a hard lump in her throat. She swallowed. A few tears trickled down her cheeks. And then she realized her father had come into her room.