The Indifference of Tumbleweed (34 page)

I do not believe I had ever heard the word ‘prostitute' at that point in my life. I did not know what men craved above all else. I could see nothing of Fanny's sparkling vision, not so much as a faint shadow of what she meant. ‘You plan to marry a rich man in San Francisco?' I asked, knowing I had it wrong, but clutching at a simple explanation for fear of my own ignorance.

‘No, Charity. I plan to
pleasure
the men of San Francisco, with soft beds and sweet scents and kind words. Or maybe there will be no need to go so far. I fancy there will be business enough in Oregon City, for a start.' She tossed her head in a gesture of exhilaration, which reminded me of the revelations she had made as we stood in the river, far back before the South Pass. ‘I have seen the truth of life. Abel has shown it to me. Conventions, hypocrisy, pretence, modesty – it is all a great swindle, designed to conceal the truth. The only real thing is
bodies
, you see. If a man is content inside his body, he will bloom and prosper and flourish…' She waved an airy hand, as if speaking to a large crowd.

‘Wait,' I begged her. ‘Surely all that's needed for this glorious state is a
wife
? Look at Father, and all the other men in the party. They are flourishing and contented because they have wives.' Except for poor Mr Fields, I silently added.

‘Perhaps so, but you have not been listening. There are too few women for so many men. A wife will be a luxury available to very few for years ahead. The rigours of the trail will not bring single women in large numbers.'

I tried to think. Were we not a party containing a dozen single women, albeit some of them still young girls? They would grow soon enough into possible wives. ‘I believe it will be a very temporary difficulty,' I said. ‘Besides…' My objections were still too cloudy for a proper articulation.

She gave me a warning look. ‘No mealy-mouthed scruples,
please.
I have no wish to hear about ungodliness or breaking my mother's heart. She has daughters to spare, and if I am as successful as I expect to be, she shall have no grounds for complaint.'

All my assumed values turned topsy-turvy, as they had been doing for months already, thanks to my sister. ‘Depravity!' I gasped. ‘You should be locked up.'

‘Be quiet, you fool.' She looked around, where there were people on all sides. Cooking, tidying, talking, playing – men, women and children in their family groups, living ordinary domestic lives even out here on the trail. None of them displayed interest in myself and Fanny, even though we must have been obviously in an intense discussion.

Her trepidation was oddly reassuring. She accepted, then, that my reaction was much as everyone else's would be. ‘You know this would make you an outcast,' I said. ‘A fallen woman.' It was a phrase I had heard back in polite eastern circles, once or twice, without fully understanding what it meant. I had an idea it involved babies, as a rule.

‘I pity you your ignorance,' she said, with a look that did contain real compassion, mixed with impatience and defiance. ‘There is a world just there for the taking, which you wilfully refuse to see.'

‘You said that before,' I replied stiffly. ‘I have world enough, thank you. I am quite contented, Miss Wickedness.' It was true, I realised, up to a point. And the source of any lingering unhappiness or confusion I might be feeling lay in this very sister and her boldness.

‘Oh, please.' She turned away, leaving me struggling with bewilderment.

‘How does Abel know so much about this glittering world, anyway?' I called after her.

Again she looked around, and flapped a hand for my silence. ‘He speaks with other men,' she hissed. ‘Men together reveal more than you could ever dream.'

‘And he has disclosed to you their male secrets.' I lifted my chin. ‘Perhaps they would be best kept private, if this is the consequence of revealing them.'

‘Don't be so prim.' This time she really did walk away, having had the final word and left me with my feelings all stirred up again, as they had been before.

Who,
who,
could I confide in? The need was more urgent than ever, while being even more difficult to satisfy. Henry Bricewood had soothed me once before with his assurances that no real harm would result from Fanny's wanton behaviour. But Henry was never going to accept this bizarre new idea, the nature of which I still could not properly grasp. I could never convey it to him in terms that would make sense. I was inclined to challenge Abel and demand to know what in the world he had told my young sister. But again, there could not be words adequate to the task. What could I say? What could
he
say? Could I even begin to betray my sister by sharing my discoveries? Or should I assume the whole thing was a dream, a fantastic castle in the air built by a bored young girl who was briefly rebelling against her destiny as a settler's wife?

At least, I noted, a little while later, I was now guilty of ignorance, rather than a lack of charity, in my sister's eyes. It was a blunter judgement, I felt; a less painful jibe.

4
^th
October

We have continued to crawl along the new road, achieving six or seven miles each day, with the nights cold and snow coming closer down the sides of the mountains. Rhododendron is still two days distant. Some trees have autumn tints to them already, and we know the summer is finished. We have had two days of rain, giving rise to considerable mud, which explains our slow progress. The toll we pay is to be $5 for the wagon, plus ten cents for each animal. Mr Tennant says will act for the whole party, with no obligation to repay him. We are all very weary. Supplies are running low and there are few good pairs of boots to be seen.

We have a great tragedy in our midst. Mrs Fields has died, almost within sight of our final destination. She simply ceased to breathe somewhere in the night just passed, and was cold and stiff by morning.

The death of Mrs Fields stunned us all. Even my grandmother had held to the belief that her sickness was perhaps serious, but certainly not mortal. She was quick to defend herself, as if expecting some blame to be laid at her feet. ‘It was a malady I
have no knowledge of,' she said. ‘A pneumonia would have killed her more quickly and the lung disease more slowly. There must have been some other trouble, that gave no sign.' She went to help the bereaved husband wrap the body in a length of coarse cotton that was, although never openly admitted, kept for this very purpose. Every wagon had something of the sort tucked away.

It was sunrise, and the unexpected death had delayed the preparations for the day's journeying, which we hoped would see us at the end of the new road well before nightfall. The children watched the procedure of shrouding their mother in silence, flashing bewildered glances between themselves and eyeing their stepfather uncertainly. He had belonged to their family for only a year – perhaps they thought he would disappear and leave them to a fate they could not imagine. I considered the possibility of trying to offer them sympathy and consolation, but I could not bring myself to the point. The boy was distant and unfriendly. Ellie was sweeter and smaller, but even she did not readily invite an embrace.

And then to my great surprise, two people detached themselves from the hovering group and approached the orphans. Henry Bricewood and my sister Fanny, side by side, knelt down and began to speak gently, he to the boy and she to the girl. I heard Henry say, ‘Come and see if we can find a sugar cake for you. I believe my mother has been baking them with the last of the flour.' Scornfully I waited for the children to dismiss this piece of irrelevance, but instead they stumbled to their feet and went with him, Jimmy amazingly holding onto Henry's hand. Fanny and Ellie followed as if drawn by a magnet.

Resentment flared within me, although I could not understand why at first. Then I realised that again, in some way, Fanny was usurping a place I believed was mine. I had been attempting to overcome my reluctance to approach the children and would have done so, given time. Instead, my impetuous sister had rushed in and ousted me.

I followed them, vaguely hoping to restore my own image as a helpful loving mother substitute. I had a special accord with Mr Fields, which went back to the first days of the journey. He had singled me out, and I liked him. I had never seen Fanny exchange more than the briefest words with him, so what did she think she was doing now? And how had Henry so astoundingly turned into a benevolent father figure?

It was a further surprise when the children were escorted to the Tennant wagon, rather than to that of the Bricewoods. Our leader was sitting in his chair, puffing his
pipe and resting his bad foot on a low stool. Ellie and Jimmy stood before him, waiting for a word, as if this was what they had expected all along.

‘My condolences on your loss,' said Mr Tennant gravely. ‘It is a grievous thing to lose your mother so young, especially after the sad death of your little sister.' He waved towards his grandson, who was whittling tent pegs and paying scant attention. ‘I have instructed Abel here to do all he can to cheer you. And Miss Fanny, it seems, has already seen where the real need lies.' He looked over their heads at me, hovering uncertainly a few yards away. ‘And Miss Charity Collins too, perhaps?' There was a knowing twinkle in his eye that discomfited me. There had been moments when I had become aware of him watching me, with an impression that he could read my mind. Perhaps this was why he had been elected as our leader – a wisdom hidden beneath a bluff façade, from which no secrets could be kept. That he knew what had been going on between his son and my sister seemed inevitable. The mystery lay in what he thought of it and what he planned to do about it, if anything.

His daughter-in-law, Mrs Luke Tennant, was a brawny woman with two small girls and a baby boy under a year in age, to care for. She was Abel's stepmother, but paid him little or no attention. With Luke gone to the war, she had been required to take part in more work than she could have bargained for. It had soured her even before the old man hurt his foot and when it fell to her to tend to his dressings and anoint the ravaged flesh with balm, she did it with a poor grace. There was no prospect of her sparing any time for the little Fields children, despite the promise of sugar cake. Mrs Barty Tennant was older than her sister-in-law by several years. I had discovered that her first two children had died of diphtheria, when they were small, and the grief had turned her strange. When her twins were born, she had been well past thirty and scarcely able to deal with this late brood. The identical boys ran wild, speaking to each other in a jargon no-one else could understand. Their mother would sit watching them with a quiet smile on her face, as if they were two pixies or goblins, beyond her scope to manage. Barty, a man with a square head and a severe squint, would finally grab them and shake them like rats to force a few hours of better behaviour out of them.

‘I will do what I can,' I said. Abel, Henry and Fanny all turned as one to look at me then. There was a muted challenge in my sister's eyes, as if she mistrusted my motives and abilities.

‘I enticed them here with an offer of cake,' said Henry. ‘I will fetch my mother. We have some to spare, I believe.'

Jimmy Fields (if that was his name, rather than Reynolds, after his natural father) raised his head and Mr Tennant smiled. Fanny put an arm around the child's shoulders in a gesture I thought rather forced. The Fields children were never very clean and Jimmy had evidently failed to wipe himself after his most recent defecation. There were brown marks on his legs, as well as his pants. Billy Franklin, only three years or so his senior, was an example he could have profitably have followed. Billy Franklin was a model for anyone.

‘We have cake here, I fancy. Elizabeth!' called the old man. ‘Fetch us some of your baking, will you?'

‘What?' came a harsh reply from somewhere the other side of their wagon.

The insolence was shocking, even though we were well aware that the woman had little patience for her father-in-law.

‘Cake!' he bellowed. ‘Do as you're told, woman, and don't answer me back.'

There was a long silence and then the junior Mrs Tennant appeared, holding a wooden board in front of her. On it was a crumbly mess of poorly-baked fruit loaf, the edges dark brown and the middle still hardly cooked at all. Raisins were visible here and there, and I glimpsed a preserved cherry, or something of the sort. It was rare that any of the women would go to the trouble of making such a thing, with the Dutch ovens ill suited to baking anything but small plain loaves of bread, which needed plenty of yeast to make them palatable. This cake hinted at an effort that had not been properly unacknowledged; an attempt at making something pleasing that had gone awry. It lacked the necessary eggs to give it the right colour, and perhaps there had not been enough milk to bind it properly.

But young Jimmy Fields had no reservations about its quality. He waited impatiently for a nod of permission from Mr Tennant and then seized a fistful of the soggy stuff and crammed it into his mouth. His sister was only a heartbeat after him, and between them they consumed the entire offering within seconds.

‘Hungry,' noted Mrs Luke, with a softer expression. Perhaps the belated appreciation of her baking had mellowed her.

‘Poor little things,' murmured Fanny.

Mr Tennant gave her a look, appraising, almost suspicious. ‘Want them for your own then, d'ye?' he asked her.

My sister had the grace to flush at this and look down with a suggestion of maidenly modesty. Abel moved further away from her, scratching his chin as if thinking of other things entirely.

Mr Tennant then looked directly at me, raising his eyebrows. ‘Never seen two sisters so different,' he observed. ‘Not a drop of character in common, as far as I can see.'

‘We had different mothers,' I said, my heart thundering as if something enormous was taking place. It was such an unusual disclosure that I found myself doubting its veracity.