The Equations of Love (18 page)

She read, daily, as she rocked, the advertisements. Suffering cruelly, she forced herself to buy a wedding ring. She had no one to help her except Mrs. Walter Hughes, widow of Walter Hughes. She dared not write to any friend in Vancouver. She had no friend in Vancouver. She had no friend anywhere in the world except Mrs. Walter Hughes. She trusted no one and was quite alone. She at last forced herself to enter a pawn broker’s shop. She wandered about the shop, looking, feeling, trying. She saw some rings. She fingered them. “Looking for a ring?” asked the pawnbroker.

“I lost my ring and I don’t like to tell my husband,” said Lilly. She saw, or thought she saw, that the man smiled. The colour flowed under the creamy pallor of her skin.

“How’s this?” asked the pawnbroker.

Lilly tried it. “I’ll take it,” she said quickly. “How much?”

The man charged her too much. She paid without question. She went home and put the wedding ring into the stocking where her money was. Mrs. Walter Hughes was now prepared; she was coming into being, and the pallid figure of Lilly Waller was receding into some part of Lilly’s mind which Mrs. Walter Hughes will forget, if she is wise and lucky. And as Lilly Waller – so trivial, so worthless – recedes and vanishes like impalpable mist, there emerges another being, shadowy yet, whose memory is now evoked by Mrs. Walter Hughes. In the shadow is the respectable man whose widow she is;
there is the supporting shade of Mr. Walter Hughes who, as Lilly sits and sews, takes handsome shape. She admires him. He belongs somewhere midway between her world and the world of Mr. Soal’s best customers. He is respectable. The dead but newly created Mr. Hughes is now Lilly’s protector, and before the dreadful day when Ranny was at the pit and she had to make her way alone to the hospital, Mr. Hughes was well known to her.

All this Lilly did alone with planned duplicity and in ruthless self-defence. She did it in the solitude and courage and emptiness and experience and inexperience of her tricky mind. Well, a girl’s gotta live, hasn’t she? What I mean is, a girl’s gotta live. If you don’t help yourself. … I guess I gotta right to be like folks. My kid’s gotta right to have a chance hasn’t he. He’s got his rights like any other kid.

B
efore the latter part of the last century, the well-wooded and watered area on Vancouver Island known as Comox was inhabited by the Comox Indians. Since then the white man has come, and there have been wars in the distant world which have, a little, fretted the peace of Comox. Navy and Air Force have visited these shores, and changed them. But when Lilly arrived at Comox in the guise of Mrs. Walter Hughes, wearing her innocent black and carrying in her arms her pretty baby, the small village lay hidden and scattered along the green and wooded contours of land that slope down to the Salt Chuck – to the sea. The village of Comox looked down on the estuary of the Courtenay River, and across at the forests, and out towards the ocean where curved the sand spit. Into the estuary swarmed the great spring salmon that fought their way in their thousands up the Courtenay River. Afterwards, Lilly remembered – but not often – that in the grey of cold dawnings she had gone with Major Butler in his rowboat. He had rowed out into the estuary, and then Lilly had taken the oars, so that he could fish. She had seen dimly under the slaty sky of dawn the great forms of the salmon breaking the
surface of the slaty sea. How cold it was at dawn. How hard she pulled on the oars against the slapping waves. And she remembered how the indolence of Major Butler had changed to a keenness; and how at last a fish had struck and the reel had screamed and the line had run out, and Lilly, cursed at and rowing hard, had worked until at last Major Butler landed the fighting forty-pounder and turned to Lilly proud and beaming, ill-temper forgotten, demanding praise.

And Lilly’s little daughter Eleanor Hughes remembered Comox, years afterwards, as the place where, slipping away from her mother and following a little path that led among long grasses and then through a belt of trees, she came to an open sunlit space. And there, in the middle of the silent open glade sat a great cat with beards on his chin and a strong tuft of hair on the end of each of his ears. He sat proudly in the sun, owning the world. The animal’s large lambent eyes, each slitted with black, gazed into the forest. Then the eyes closed and the cat opened its mouth wide in a silent cry. The little child stepped out into the sunny glade, her arms by her side and her fingers spread. She stumbled and looked down. She looked up, and the great cat had gone. She had not heard him go, but the glade was empty.

And Mrs. Butler remembered Comox as the place where she had found peace at last (she thought), until Maurice got restless again and they moved on. And she always remembered the strange girl who gave her so much comfort, Mrs. Hughes who came with her baby, and, years later, went away as strangely as she had come.

And Maurice, her husband, remembered the lazy days, and the early mornings when sea and sky were mottled with the same slate colour and dawn crept up and changed the sea and sky, and in the cold dawning he plied up and down, up
and down, and sometimes he won, and sometimes he came back with nothing. And he remembered the summer days when he rowed about and about the sand spit, and when he tried for cohoe nearer the shore. But a man like Maurice Butler cannot always fish and garden, fish and garden, and he became restless, and that – what was her name? – Hughes – girl sometimes irked him. And then she went away and took the little girl with her. And the memories of Comox lying green and golden to the sunshine at the end of the trail, sloping down to the shore, came, but not often, to all these people who lived there and are there no longer.

As Lilly for the first time jogged along the country road that wound from Courtenay to Comox, following what was at that time a beautiful dead end in the green of the countryside and in Lilly’s life a fair dead end where she and Baby would for some time be secure, she was more aware of the agitation within her than she was of the green beauty of the unfamiliar fields that bordered the dusty road. Mr. Meeker drove her in his buggy that had a contraption behind the buggy seat for carrying his bread for delivery to the Comox store. When it was known in Courtenay that there was a young woman with a baby, and that she wanted to drive out to Butlers’ place, people surmised that she was going to enquire for the position of Butlers’ Esther who had to go back to Scotland to be with her folks because her pa was sick. Mr. Meeker of Meeker Bros. Bakers and Confectioners was very willing to drive Lilly. Mr. Meeker was very willing indeed, because he was a male gossip and busybody, and the unofficial discoverer and greeter and reporter of any newcomer arriving in Courtenay. And so Mr. Meeker questioned Lilly, and Lilly, mistrustful as the yellow alley cat, mistrustful as Lilly Waller who feared the police, mistrustful as Mrs. Walter Hughes, a poor young widow alone in
the world, planned, and observed her usual reticence, answering with care.

She held the baby at her breast, and looked either straight ahead of her or down upon the child. Mr. Meeker enjoyed jogging along the Comox road in the sunshine with this slim quiet girl dressed in black sitting beside him.

“You said you was going to Butlers’ place?”

“Yes. Please,” said Lilly.

“D’you know Butlers?”

“No. I never seen them.”

“You know they’re losing that Esther of theirs, then. She’s a good girl and a fine worker, Esther. Too bad she’s gotta go back to Glasgow and look after her pa he’s sick. She hates to go back and she sure hates leaving Mrs. Butler. She thinks there’s no one can look after Mrs. Butler but her.”

“Is Mrs. Butler nice to work for?”

“Sure, Mrs. Butler’s real nice, she’s a lady she is. The Major’s a nice fella, crazy about fishing, quite a bit younger’n her. She’s one of those people all the time readin’ in books. They’re English, that’s why they’re like that. Crazy about gardening, the both of them.”

“Would it be a nice place for Baby?” asked Lilly diffidently. Since Baby had been separated from her body, she was more than ever a part of her. Lilly’s whole body and spirit which had never known a direction, were now solely directed towards giving Baby everything that Lilly could give her. Lilly never said to herself, “I want Baby to have everything I never had.” Nothing was relative to the past. She said, instead, “Baby shall have everything I can get her. Baby must be like folks.” So Lilly must try to be like folks, too. She must try hard. She knew that there were great gaps in her knowledge, and that in these gaps of inexperience she might fall,
taking Baby with her. So she had to be watchful of question and answer.

Of course Lilly would lie (for Baby) if need be (as she had lied her own way along her life), and she would steal for Baby as long as she would not be discovered. She would rather not lie nor steal, because lying and stealing so often mean Trouble, don’t they; oh, yes, they often mean Trouble. So Lilly would be so careful, so watchful, so silent, but she would find a place where Baby could grow up like folks. And now that this old man was driving her and was full of curiosity about her, she must answer his questions, because if you say nothing, Lilly knew intuitively, people begin to wonder, don’t they. It’s best to say something. As Lilly sat upright beside old Mr. Meeker, jogging with the slow rough motion of the buggy, dressed in her innocent black, holding her baby, looking both young and serious – as indeed she was – she prepared her case. The sun shone down on the old horse taking her time and flicking away the flies, on Mr. Meeker avid with curiosity, and on mother and child jogging into Comox.

In the meantime Baby, rocked by the moving buggy, soothed by the monotone of Mr. Meeker’s enquiring voice, fanned by soft summer airs, woke and slept, woke and slept, and, waking, looked up at her mother’s brown eyes with her own brown eyes half closed, half open, and slept again.

“You belong around here?” asked Mr. Meeker.

“No.”

“Thought not. How long you been in these parts?”

“I been in hospital….”

Mr. Meeker looked at Baby. “Oh,” he said.

“Well, well. Looks like you’d seen a bit of trouble?”

Lilly nodded, and then she said, “Lost my husband … coupla months before Baby was born.”

“You
don’t
say!” exclaimed Mr. Meeker, who had guessed something like that from Lilly’s garb, but wanted to know for sure. “You pore young woman! Kinda young for a widda, ain’t you?”

“I’m not as young as I look.” Lilly was ready for this one. “Mr. Hughes always said seemed like I’d never grow up, but I guess I will. Trouble ages a person.”

“Sure does. Did you say ‘Hughes’?” enquired Mr. Meeker. “Your name Hughes?”

“Mrs. Walter Hughes,” said Lilly primly. She rocked a bit, patting Baby’s little rump.

“‘Mrs. Walter Hughes!’ You don’t say! Well, well. So you’re Mrs. Walter Hughes! Got any folks?”

“Got an older sister back in New Brunswick. Lived with her till I was eighteen and then when we was married Mr. Hughes and me come west.”

“B.C.?”

“No, we come to the prairie … he … we … was trying to farm … and Mr. Hughes … he …” Lilly faltered. “It was a horse,” she said.

Mr. Meeker, looking sideways, saw tears in Lilly’s eyes. He cleared his throat.

“Now, now, don’t you think no more about it, a nice young woman like you, you’ll get over it. But it sure was tough, ve-ry ve-ry tough.” Curiosity got the better of him. “Why’n’t you go back to your sister and not come out here getting jobs on your own and you with a baby?”

Lilly swallowed hard, blinked, and said, “My sister and me aren’t good friends any more. I’d be too proud to go back east. My sister was mad at me marrying so young. She had six kids and I guess I helped quite a bit in the house and she figured I ought to of stayed and not get married. But Mr. Hughes he
said to heck with them and he was bound we’d get married and come west and we got married and my sister was real mad but my brother-in-law he was kinda sorry for me and he said you go right ahead and he gave me twenty-five dollars and not to tell my sister.”
There
, thought Lilly, and it was good.

The mare had slowed to a very slow walk. Mr. Meeker leaned forward, holding loose reins. He nodded agreement as Lilly talked. “I got a sister like that,” he said, “she’d take the back teeth out of your head she’s that mean. Giddap. Well, I sure hope you get this job. It won’t be easy, you and a baby. But if you get this job you’re fixed. There’s not a place like this in the whole district. They’re particular, they’re particular, and they like things done nice, but they’re fine people, well fixed. Well, I’ll set you down right there, at the white gate. I wish you luck, I’m sure. You come right over to the store when you’re through and wait around for a lift back.”

Lilly got down from the buggy and stood holding Baby and looking up at Mr. Meeker.

“You’ve been real kind,” she said timidly. She did not know how to thank him.

“That’s all right, that’s all right.
Giddap
,” said Mr. Meeker, and drove on to the store where he was able to tell the company all about young Mrs. Walter Hughes who had buried her husband who was killed by a horse in Saskatchewan and was going to work at Butlers’ and how she was a quiet-spoken young woman and all broke up about her husband so recent and wasn’t she wrapped up in that baby, he sure hoped she got the job and that Butler wouldn’t bother her none. The talk in the store then resumed the endless discussion of how much older Mrs. Butler was than Major Butler; what was they doing in China anyway; Major Butler was in the Customs, why then he wasn’t no soldier; he was in the
Boxer troubles, but he didn’t look like no boxer, too skinny; he was head of the Chinese army, they musta kicked him out; he was in the British Ambassador’s office, well, he might be at that; seemed a nice fella; well, they minded their business and paid their bills; kinda funny coming way off here, maybe they wasn’t married anyways. Discussions like this were pleasant in the long winter evenings and in the long summer evenings too and had the merit that they went on and on and never arrived.