Away (28 page)

They represent the most dangerous kind of shape changers: those who cannot see, because of darkness, beyond the gesture of the moment.

A
forest child, Eileen was disturbed by the immense fact of the lake. Her landscape had never included a phenomenon this imposing, this regular. But mostly she was disturbed by its familiarity; her sense that she was related to it in ways she couldn’t understand. She knew immediately what it would sound like when she stood on its shore and how it would change tone and texture as the sky changed. This ocean of a lake was hers; a possession she had inherited at birth, but one she had never requested – an unruly relative that must, sooner or later, be reckoned with. It frightened her. It’s mine, she had told her brother, not knowing at all what she meant by the assertion other than that it was true. She would have to live beside it, its voice forever in her ears.

Liam refused to rest after their last night’s walk. “We’ll reach the harbour by nightfall,” he told his sister, “and sleep there in a real town hotel with a dining room and silver forks and spoons. We’ll use the manners Osbert taught us. Tomorrow we’ll buy some land and a house. We’ll buy a horse and a carriage and you can have a parasol.”

“What’s a parasol?”

“Something that looks like a big flower that ladies hold over their heads.”

Eileen’s mind was filled with the left-over images from night journeys and the imposition of this lake upon her life; its invasion. “I don’t want a parasol,” she said.

Her brother ignored her comment. “We’ll have a herd of a
hundred cows,” he said, “and fourteen acres each of everything that grows. Well hire workers.”

Later he said, “I’ve counted forty-three ships on the lake – nine steamers and thirty-four sails.”

The road bent in front of them, leading them towards a village. They bought bread and cheese from a general store and ate it in the trembling shade of a maple tree. As evening fell, the harbour of Port Hope caught gradual fire below them as they witnessed from the last slope its gas lamps ignite one by one, and all the ships reflecting artificial light in the waters of the lake. Then a din from the west startled them as a train – its windows ablaze – flung itself across a trestle bridge which, from this distance, looked too delicate to hold the weight implied by its clamour.

“That was a locomotive.” Liam was impressed, wide-eyed. “Soon we must ride on a locomotive.”

Eileen was more comfortable with the lake in the darkness, though the air was moist with its presence, and only when the train rattled over the trestle bridge was she able to stop listening for the conversation she knew the waves were having with the shore.

Liam and Eileen did not stay in either of Port Hope’s brick hotels with dining rooms and shining cutlery, their rooms being fully occupied by promoters, speculators, and financiers attracted by the town’s new prosperity. The proprietor of the British Hotel dismissed them curtly from his lobby, suspicious of their ragged appearance and more than a bit put off by the mention of the cow. His colleague at the American Hotel on the opposite side of the street was more garrulous. He told them the story of the railway and subsequent “boom” of the
town, and directed them towards the harbour and an establishment sometimes known as the Seaman’s Inn and sometimes as Canada House.

As instructed, they walked beside the steel lines of the railway which led to the docks. This harbour, Liam said, resembled nothing that he could remember. There had been no railway here, he told Eileen, when he and his parents had arrived, and none of these grand houses; he pointed to the few Gothic mansions, recently built or in various stages of construction, on the hill behind them. He said he thought there had been one white house with many windows near the shore but he supposed it would be gone by now with all the new wharfs – lost to the “boom.” In the unnatural light Liam looked paler to Eileen, thinner than he had on all their night voyages, his hair in the gaslight an odd shade of pink. “It’s a pity about that,” he said, referring to the house.

They heard the inn before they saw it – music and men’s voices, laughter and the odd curse. When it loomed into view, lit against the dark lake, it appeared, even from the rear, to be in a state of great agitation, the structure vibrating with the activity it contained. Eileen heard a fragment of an Irish reel she recognized, then the sound of breaking glass. Through the back windows she could see the large torsos of rugged men lunge in various directions, meeting and parting in what looked to her like serious combat. After she and Liam rounded the corner and began to climb the wooden stairs that faced the beach stones and the lake, Eileen realized that the boards beneath her feet were shaking. She watched as Liam tied the cow’s rope to a porch railing, then allowed herself to be guided over the threshold and into a riot of male dancing.

A shoulder swung by, inches from her face, a grizzly beard heaved into sight and disappeared again. Eileen flattened
herself against a wall as a line of broad backs veered in her direction then dived away from her towards the other side of the room. The pandemonium of a train crossing the nearby trestle bridge – the longest and highest in Canada, the clerk at the American Hotel had told them – was all but drowned out by the thumping of hobnail boots. Arm in arm, five leaping men thrashed against the bar, from which several gleaming mugs instantly jumped and shattered. Men in pairs clasped each other by the shoulders, kicking their legs wildly to the left or the right, entangling themselves with stationary chairs which were held aloft for a few moments before being hurled against the wall.

After a few more thunderous moments, all noise abruptly stopped. The men collapsed on tables, chairs, the floor, the bar, their great ribcages heaving from exertion. Then, as though ordered to do so by an invisible commander, they all turned in unison and calmly regarded the newcomers.

“I’m Captain O’Shaunessy,” said a stout, grey-haired, bearded man behind the counter. “What can I do for you?”

They were given a large, sparsely furnished room overlooking the Great Lake, whose waves they would hear all night long when the sound of them was not overwhelmed by a passing locomotive or sporadic outbursts of dancing downstairs.

“They’re mostly all seamen from the lake,” Captain O’Shaunessy had told Liam as they climbed the stairs. “They’re all drinkers and they’re all dancers. They’ll all live to be a hundred so long as they don’t take the lake for granted or sail with anyone else who does. I’m about a hundred myself, though I’ve never counted. Never once took her for granted. There are five hundred and forty different kinds of weather out there, and I
respect every one of them. White squalls, green fogs, black ice, and the dreaded yellow cyclone, just to mention a few. There are quite a few that cannot be mentioned at all, for if you do they’ll come to seize you even on land – far inland. I’m retired now but I still don’t take the lake for granted. If you want anything just ask for my brother. His name is Captain O’Shaunessy.”

“But
your
name is Captain O’Shaunessy too.”

“Of course it is. I’m his brother. Because of the lady I’ll give you the room with the door that leads to the upper verandah. You can sometimes spot ten different kinds of weather from there. You should see the lake when winter’s coming on,” he added ominously, “or when she’s working up to a purple riptide.” He opened the door noisily with a large iron key. “Have a good sleep,” he had said as he turned again towards the stairs. Both Eileen and Liam thanked him, but their voices were lost in the deafening racket of accordion music and pounding feet.

Mornings at the Seaman’s Inn were relatively tranquil; the dancers either snoring in their rooms or sailing respectfully over the surface of the Great Lake. Eileen awoke to a shimmering ceiling, an empty room, and the sound of a passing train. Shortly afterwards, her brother slipped through the door. He had already been out walking and had bought bread and apples for their breakfast. While he ate he paced back and forth through a patch of sunlight on bare pine boards.

“It seems impossible,” he said finally, “but it has to be. I went down to the water, turned around, looked at the Seaman’s Inn, and there it was.”

“There
what
was?”

“The house … I could see the reflection of the lake in its
windows. I though that it was gone, but there it was. All those windows.”

Eileen could see a lighthouse through the window. She focused on this rather than on the lake. The quivering light around her gave the impression that the room was full of rain.

“My first memory,” her brother was saying, “looking back at me. I wonder if Father remembered it as well.” He turned towards the window. “Why didn’t I ask him?” The young man threw open the window and pitched an apple core out towards the lake, “Sometimes I have no idea where I am. If the light hadn’t been just right, if the lake hadn’t been in the windows, I would never have known where I was.” He pushed the window closed. “I’m going to buy it, Eileen. I think it’s supposed … that I’m supposed to buy it. A house … all those years in my memory. I’m going to buy it.”

“All right,” said Eileen, rapidly pulling on her skirt, “but where is it? All these wharfs and docks. Take me to see it.”

“I don’t have to take you to see it. I don’t have to take you anywhere.”

“Liam …”

“You are standing in it. The white house in my memory is the Seaman’s Inn.”

Negotiations proved difficult. The inn was owned by the two retired Captains O’Shaunessy, identical twins whose only differences lay in their Christian names – Sean and Seamus – and in their states of mind. Sometimes both stood behind the bar, sometimes only one. But which one? Sometimes it mattered which one, other times it didn’t. Sean wanted to sell, but Seamus didn’t. Then Seamus agreed to a fixed amount and
Sean became maudlin after several whiskeys and gave a long, tearful speech about the lake.

“I’ve never taken her for granted,” he said to Liam, “but I’ve never left her behind neither. I’ve slept on her bosom and sprawled by her side. I wouldn’t sell the Seaman’s Inn for a pair of mermaid’s tits. Where are these boys going to dance, I ask you, if I sell this inn?” He gestured magnanimously around a room filled with burly customers. “And what about her?” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the lake. “If I were to sell the Seaman’s I might offend her and she’d send some of her weather to get me, no matter where I went.” He leaned across the bar and looked fiercely at Liam. “She’d send the magenta maelstrom to get me. And,” he added, darkly, “she’d send it to get you, too.”

“Well,” laughed Liam, “that
would
be a problem. My sister here says our family has the curse of the mines on it already and it would be a shame to add a purple maelstrom to that.”

“And why would that be now … this curse of the mines?” Seamus strolled towards them from the other end of the bar. He directed his question to Eileen, who sat primly on a high wooden stool near her brother.

“Because of the mines that will be all around our old property. We sold it, and someone said there would be a curse … but I don’t remember who.”

“And what kind of mines might they be, Liam?” Seamus solicitously poured several inches of whiskey into his lodger’s cup.

The young man sipped slowly, pausing for effect. He set the drink carefully back down on the bar. “Gold mines, Captain O’Shaunessy,” he finally said. “There’s a terrible quantity of gold on that property we sold. And we sold it,” he added, “for a very good price.” He placed a newly purchased felt hat on his head. “I’m off to take care of some business, now. You’ll look
after my sister, I assume.” He eyed the men in the room suspiciously. “If one of them touches her,” Liam said, “there’ll be more than a purple maelstrom to deal with. I’ve lived in the bush for a long time. I know how to fight bears.”

Liam’s business took him into town every afternoon of the following week, leaving Eileen in a room full of Irish lake sailors, safe in the custody of one Captain O’Shaunessy or the other, often both. She remained near the bar with her back to the lake silently embroidering flowers on white cloth and listening to the captains argue about the sale of the inn. “You’re a fool, Seamus … the lad’s got gold money,” or “The lake’s in our blood, Sean … to sell the Seaman’s would show a lack of respect,” or vice versa, depending on the time of day or the mood of the speaker.

Both men specialized in a kind of monologue that could only be referred to as a rant, often breaking from private argument to preach to the entire room. “What do you think, boys?” one or the other would say. “Captain O’Shaunessy, here, says we should abandon you all, leave you to dance unsheltered by the walls and the roofbeams of the Seaman’s Inn, leave you with no home to return to after you’ve been out there paying your respects to her, not taking her whims for granted, enduring her tantrums, patient with her doldrums. Like Cromwell himself he’d rob you of your rightful home and cast you off to the four corners of the world for the simple want of a place to drink and a place to dance. It breaks my heart, it does, to think of you all scattered and the lack of respect this scattering shows to her.”

The sailors nodded sagely, listened quietly, knowing that a similar speech would likely be delivered the next day by the other Captain O’Shaunessy.

After one of these passionate declarations, late in the
afternoon towards the end of the week, when the room had resumed its discussions of dance steps and lake schooners, and the captains were polishing glasses and quarrelling quietly and more or less amiably, and Eileen had gathered enough courage to sit facing the front where she could glance, now and then, through the window to the lake, the door of the inn opened and within seconds the room’s population was on its feet. Tables were pushed back against walls, chairs were stacked in teetering piles, fiddles were brought to chins, accordions were squeezed between arms, and the crowd, which had pressed itself around the door, parted into two cheering halves as into the room danced a tall, straight, curly-haired young man. The two captains O’Shaunessy embraced and wiped tears from their eyes. “It’s him,” they said in unison to Eileen. “The brightest and the best. God be praised, he’s back. Aidan Lanighan.”