The Devil's Making (41 page)

‘Chad!'

‘I turned to face her. She was facing me. She raised her arms slowly, reaching for me. I walked towards her across the tufted grass and into her arms, holding her to me. She was trembling slightly, and warm through her shift now dry. We kissed, rather clumsily and wildly, our lips slipping across each other. I felt her pulling me back toward the picnic place and the forest. Still embracing, as if afraid that letting go would cause us to reflect on what we were doing and stop, we stumbled across the grass to the blanket and almost fell onto it, scrambling to push aside glasses and plates with a clatter onto the ground.

We lay in a tight embrace on the blanket, rolling, panting, kissing, clutching each other. Gradually she allowed me to become free with her body, pushing against me as I touched her, and she became free with mine, running her fingers down my back and in and around my thighs. Although we never pulled back to look at each other or caught each other's eye, for a long while we caressed each other, to an almost unbearable extent. I could not help thinking of Lukswaas, her skin which moved on her body like that of a cat. Aemilia was different, her skin more taut, but the lines of her body exquisite. Our clothes were peeled off and shoved aside but still we caressed each other. Although Aemilia had seemed eager for this embrace she did not now seem eager to consummate it. I faltered, aware suddenly of the seriousness of the situation – one move and we would be into the abyss, if that was what it was. But Aemilia whispered into my ear, her breath roaring and hot: ‘I'm not so innocent as I seem, and nor are you. Do it.' She moved slightly, and I did. We were together, again for a long time. I was surprised that although bursting with need, something deep inside me was slow to give way. It was not the same as … My movements became almost mechanical. ‘Be careful, darling,' she said, ‘Don't make me pregnant.' I pulled back and out of her, and tried to jam myself forward between her and the blanket and finish it by friction. But I couldn't. I began to think of Lukswaas – but not in
that
way. Instead I felt like crying. Aemilia was clutching me tightly as if locked or frozen.

We lay still. I opened my eyes so that I could see her face. Out of one closed eyelid, next to me, a tear was trickling. I almost said ‘What's wrong?' Instead I closed my eyes and lay in her arms, my heart sinking, trying to answer the question for myself. I realized, numbly, the obvious fact that she was no virgin. (Not like Lukswaas!) And that she had known all along what this afternoon might lead to. And that her heart was not in it. No: I knew, from Lukswaas, what a woman was like when her heart was in it. My heart had not been in this either. But of course I had wanted it. She must have wanted it too: she had drunk a glass of wine for each one she had poured me. Why should she give herself away like this? It was, in conventional terms, a horrendous, a fantastic step for a girl of good family to take. In theory it destroyed all chances of a marriage. She had even said to me – out of honesty, cynicism, or despair? – ‘I'm not so innocent as I seem, and nor are you.' Yet neither of us had been able to go all the way through with this. There had been no ‘Boo woo'…

I moved back from her. Now she was looking at me seriously, but she broke into a not quite real smile. ‘Chad,' she said, ‘keep holding me.' She pulled me back towards her. It was warm in the declining rays of the sun, and we could have stayed there a long while. She snuggled closely against me. ‘Don't worry', she said, ‘I'm afraid I disrupted you. It will be all right.'

‘Of course it won't', I said. ‘Now is not the time for us. And I must go. I'm on duty. I shall be late as it is.' I moved away from her but she pulled me close again and stroked my naked back.

‘It doesn't matter. Let's wait until the sun is down. I don't need to be home yet. As you see, I'm a free agent. But don't let's even talk. It's so nice, just like this.' She began caressing me, and indeed it was lovely, in the warm sun, in this lovely woman's arms, and I could have started all over again except that it had gone wrong for a reason and in part of me – which seemed to be my mind, rather than my heart – a cold logical train of thought was asserting itself. It said to me that Aemilia had prostituted herself to me. She had not done it for money, and she had prostituted something more than the Windsor Rooms girls: her reputation. For what? For time. For nothing but time.

I pulled out of her arms and scrambled to my feet. ‘I'm sorry, I must go,' I said. And although not with the horror in which Lukswaas had backed away from me, ‘the source of horror,' I turned away from Aemilia, the source of temptation – and comfort, and an honest warmth which I realized was not love but friendship – and went across the clearing to put on my clothes.

To my amazement she leapt up and followed me, tugging at my arm. ‘Chad! Chad! You mustn't go. My God! You can't just have a woman and then go away and leave her!'

‘I pushed her hand away and began pulling on my trousers. I reached for the stone and ring and slipped them over my head.

‘Did she give you that, your little Indian squaw? Aemilia spat.

‘How do you know about that?'

‘Just a guess. I know Indian girls wear these. The sluts!' She clutched at me again. ‘Chad!' She began to cry, genuinely, her face a picture of despair.

‘Aemilia, I know what you've been doing. You've been keeping me here. I don't know why. I'm on duty. I hope your keeping me here has nothing to do with that.' In fact, my guiding thought, though confused, was that she must be keeping me from my job in order to have me lose it, or to ruin my reputation in some way.

I can't believe this!' She said passionately, standing there naked but apparently careless of it. ‘I give myself to you. I give my body. You
have
me. And you abandon me! You're an absolute bounder! If you go now I'll tell the world you have assaulted me and raped me!' Her eyes were blazing.

But this excess of hers enabled me to stand my ground. ‘You can tell the world what you want. I shall remain silent. And I didn't truly have you. Nor did you truly have me. Let's not pretend. Aemilia I'm most grateful to you, but…'

‘Grateful!' She shrieked. She reached out to restrain me as I made a lunge away.

‘I
must
go. My duty is my honour. Please respect it, as I respect yours.'

‘Oh God! What rubbish you Englishmen speak. You will stay here with me. You cannot abandon a defenseless woman in the forest like this.'

‘Get dressed, and I'll see you out to the road. Then I must go. Believe me. I know you're upset, but I have to. I can come and see you tomorrow if you wish, and we can mend our fences. Aemila, my dear…' I felt real tenderness, ‘please let us be friends.'

‘In order to enjoy me properly next time! No. If you wish to avail yourself of my embraces, you shall stay with me now.'

‘I'll have to go.' Almost blindly, I pushed her aside and walked across to the hamper. In the dying light I began stacking the picnic things in it – the plates, glasses, a piece of cake, the empty wine flagon.

Down by the water Aemilia stood stepping into her drawers, then her hooped petticoat, then pulling her dress on over her head. She stooped to put on her shoes. Then she picked up her stays, which she had not bothered to put on, folding them into a stiff bundle. She came over to me and turned her back. ‘Button me up.'

I buttoned the fabric, now grey in the dull light, up her back from waist to neck over her white shift. I could have cried with anguish.

‘Chad,' she said softly, and turned toward me, embracing me. ‘We
can
be friends. One more time…' She snuggled in closely.

I pulled free of her with a jerk, almost ran to the hamper and picked it up. ‘Come!' I said, setting off into the darkened forest. I heard her footsteps behind me as I hurried along the path. I reached the cart and went round to the back, pushing the hamper behind the seat. Aemilia was beside me, throwing on the folded cloth, the bundle of her stays, and the blanket.

‘Will you please escort me home?' she said quietly. ‘It's getting dark.'

‘Aemilia!' I yelled, losing my temper. ‘I
must
go. I'm already almost two hours late. I'll escort you to the road only.' But I hesitated. In truth it would not be chivalrous to let her go home in the dark – not that it was actually dark, but it soon would be. My resolve weakened. Suddenly I hardly knew why I
was
leaving her. To hell with Seeds, to hell with the jail.

‘All right,' I said. ‘I'll turn the cart for you, and I'll escort you home over the hill.' It would only be an extra mile. ‘But you must promise to go as fast as you can. In fact I shall ride in front.'

‘She said nothing. She helped me, rather listlessly, hitch her horse to the cart and turn it, not an easy thing to do in the growing dark. Then as I helped her politely up into the seat, she turned and embraced me gently. ‘Forgive me, Chad. Oh, please forgive me.'

‘Nothing to forgive. I have nothing but the most tender feelings for you Aemilia. Let me come and see you soon and I hope we can be friends again.'

‘All right.' She climbed into the seat.

I unhitched my horse, mounted and set off down the path and out of the forest. We emerged onto the main road at a point where it crossed a rise, and as we turned South we could see down to Victoria and the Straits. The jagged line of Hurricane Ridge, in Washington Territory, was incredibly clear, like a long serrated blue blade against the pink light reflected from the sunset on the West, which flared above the lower mountains of our own Vancouver Island, tinted a green-blue such as would never be seen in England. I trotted my horse along in front of the cart, down the road a little way, then up the cross road which led over a low hill between fields and woods to the Orchard Farm valley. I did not look back. It was nothing like completely dark when we reached the road a hundred yards from Orchard Farm. Some light might even hold until I reached town. I turned as the cart came up behind me and called ‘Goodnight!'

‘Goodnight,' I heard distantly.

I kicked my horse in the sides and set off down the road to the nearest thing to a gallop it could manage, a sort of sporadic canter, so bumpy that I had to hold on frantically to avoid being thrown, wild thoughts racing through my head. My corrupt, savage mistress had turned out to be utterly clean and pure; my civilized ideal had turned out to be mysteriously corrupt. Aemilia had been detaining me, keeping me away from something I would find at the jail.

25

I arrived in Victoria after dark and returned my horse to the stable, putting down an extra dollar since she had been ridden hard and would need walking. I hurried down the street to the courthouse, but approached it cautiously along the side of the square. Two things Aemilia had said had stuck in my mind: ‘I'm not so innocent as I seem, and nor are you.' And her remark about my getting the stone ornament from a squaw. So far as I knew the stone was unique, at least to the Tsimshian. Aemilia must know the Tsalak in some way, and I wondered if she was conspiring with them in an attempt to get Wiladzap out of jail when only the feckless Seeds would be on guard. It seemed an insane suspicion, but I was assuming the worst.

As I approached the courthouse I could see no one about. Sunday nights were quiet in Victoria, and there was no street lighting, since there was no gas. The courthouse, like other large buildings, had its own lamp above the door. On the far side of the square it was totally dark. Anyone could be there. The door would be locked. Normally I would have sauntered up to it and stood digging in my pocket for the key. Now I took the key firmly in one hand still in my pocket, walked very briskly up to the door, unlocked it with a single movement, tugged it open, leapt in and slammed it behind me. As I did so there was a scurry and a movement in the shadows outside, lost immediately to me as I rammed the inside bolt into its socket. My ears were assaulted by the sound of singing from the jail wing. I walked cautiously across the dimly lit vestibule, bringing out my second key in case the jail gate was locked. I peeped round the corner.

From my angle of vision I could see down the cell corridor through the barred gate, which was hanging slightly open, and at the same time across the corridor into Seeds's quarters, a comfortable room where Seeds and I could play cards near the open door and at the same time keep an eye on the cell corridor. Now, in the larger part of the room, not visible from the cells, there was a scene like a theatrical tableau or a coarse painting by some ribald artist, such as Rowlandson, of the previous century. Seeds was sitting in his usual armchair beside his table on which was a whisky bottle and some empty glasses. On his knee was an Indian woman, naked except for her woven bark apron, under which Seeds was feeling with one hand while he nuzzled his big head into her breasts. She was playing with his member which she had brought out of his trousers.

There was a sudden roar of noise interrupting the singing from the cells – an outburst of whistles and cheers.

I dashed forward past Seeds's door, pushed the gate open, and rushed down the corridor not sparing a glance for the cells although I was inundated by a racket of shouts and a smell of liquor. I reached Wiladzap's cell. Lukswaas, crouching in front of the lock, was working through Seeds's key ring. I struck it from her hand and it hit the floor with a clash. She jumped back in fright. I faced Wiladzap who was standing up against the cell door, holding two of the bars with his hands. Wiladzap's teeth were bared in rage like those of an animal. I stood panting, looking into Wiladzap's eyes which were blazing with the same rage and determination as his whole face, but suddenly they shifted to one side in a brief glance past me.

I felt a sudden strange tingling sensation of alarm, and instantly froze. Wiladzap glanced to the side again and shouted a word I did not understand.