Extensions (25 page)

After we drained our glasses, Dad gathered up the dishes. I wanted to help, but he insisted I stretch out on the couch after my busy day. As the old corduroy absorbed my weariness, I tried to call up Sara's account of that last scene with her mother. Had she given anything else to her eight-year-old twin daughters besides photos? I knew the tricks memory played; the best thing you can do when trying to remember something is to forget it. And maybe my teenage indifference never did register more than half of what my talkative grandmother was saying.

I thought about the final exam next week. Why was the prospect of studying not filling me with the usual dread? My brain was too tired to start tonight, so I switched on the
TV
to a Christmas skating show. Figure skating always made me think of Gail and how she would look on the ice, had she persisted. When the phone rang, I was ready to say her name until I saw it was an unknown number.

“Arabella?”

“Yes?”

“It's Warren. How are you?”

“Better, thanks. I'm still using my cast off and on.”

“Giving it up completely takes some time.”

“That's for sure. I'm back at work, dragging my feet, you might say.”

“I can't imagine you not doing your duty,” he said ironically.

“You'd be surprised.” I could feel my cheeks heating up.

“Did you ever find out why you arrested me?”

“I did.”

“So I hope you know I'm not too dangerous to have coffee with.”

“I do.”

“I'd like to apologize, however, for knocking you down. And it would be more sincere to do it in person. Care to meet sometime in the next few days? You say when.”

Fully intending to name an afternoon on the weekend, I blurted out: “Tomorrow — after work?”

“When do you get off?”

“Six.”

“Shall we say The Cactus Club on Broadway and Ash at seven? And make it supper?”

“Sounds good.”

My head was spinning when I hung up. The whole day had been so unpredictable that I almost expected him to say “Happy Birthday,” but that would have been too weird. Gail had left a message while I was talking, so my intuition was working. I would e-mail her from work tomorrow and call her on the weekend. Now I needed rest. Dad was getting his grapefruit and yogurt ready and had turned on the radio for his golden oldies. I thanked him for a memorable birthday.

In my bedroom I kicked off my clothes, pulled on an oversized
T
shirt, and slid under the quilt. For a moment I thought of sitting up and meditating, but decided it would be just as effective lying down. What were my goals for the coming year? To do well in my new job. To be rid of the sadness and doubts from the past year. To find happiness with…? I stopped short at that petition, since it was too big for me to decide so soon. I remember Sara once saying, “When you look at your love partner, you're seeing yourself and the exact stage of your own evolution. If you want to improve the calibre of your choice, you must elevate your own soul qualities.” She had added her two pet sayings that “Ignorance is the only sin” and “Nothing is permanent,” but figuring out what they all meant was beyond me right now. I finished with a word of thanks for my new acquaintanceship with my great-grandmother and especially for the family who had always been in my life: Sara, Dad, Mom, and Janetta.

As I did so, the scene of Sara recounting her mother's last days came back to me. Still no recollection of Sara mentioning a bangle, but when Jane was dying of influenza, she had asked for her pen and writing paper. Roland became angry at her for wasting precious energy, and Sara had to take them to her when he was out of the house. Jane had propped herself on her elbow on the cot, breathing heavily, but writing quickly and urgently. Just before she died, she gave Sara an envelope to mail that day. Sara was too anxious about her mother to think much more about it except that it was addressed to her Aunt Catherine in Wales. Who had that letter if Janetta and Dad ended up with the rest? Before falling asleep, I added another mission to the year ahead.

JANE SETS THE REST OF THE CAKE on a shelf in the cold scullery, noting fresh snow in the gaping space under the back door. In the crisp December air, its cover of white could almost delude an onlooker that Extension, cradled by bluffs, possessed the charm of a miniature mountain village. She shakes her head at the reality, and covers the plate with a large mixing bowl to keep the boiled icing from drying out. In all her thirty-five years, nothing but a lofty sponge layer cake frosted with swirls and peaks would do for a birthday. Today she added raspberry juice when Sara insisted on pink for her mother. Once Llewyllyn had chosen the colour of the icing — yellow or orange or bright blue — but at almost fourteen, her son no longer cares about such trimmings. Or about much of anything at all.

Supper over, he holds the thick tapestry curtain aside and waits until his mother steps back into the kitchen before entering the porch. He takes an old jacket from a hook, pulling it on carelessly outside in the cold. In the last year, he has found more and more excuses to avoid being in the same space as his father. Already taller than both parents, Llewyllyn makes Jane think of some Jane Austen characters — dark wavy hair, long lashes, and aquiline features. Oh, how she loved to read before her days were stretched to bursting with sewing. A cracking voice and sparse whiskers on his upper lip and chin have turned her gentle boy into a darker, brooding version of his younger self. Was this the same son who once assisted her so eagerly — in the garden, delivering mended garments, and hauling the water that was always so scarce in summer — now having to be coaxed to crank the ice cream maker two hours earlier?

At the sound of clean blows on billets of firewood, she breathes a sigh of relief; at least he has not wandered over to the pithead where the strike still offers too many harmful temptations for young men. She wonders if Gomer ever did learn to chop wood. Then she wonders when she will ever see her younger brother and his family again. Victoria might as well be Wales.

In the front room an unusual scene awaits her: Sara sits on her father's knee pretending to read “Snow White and Rose Red” — a story she knows by heart — while Janet plays with a doll on the rag rug at his feet. Jane sinks into her worn armchair and before she can pick up her knitting, Janet lands on her lap with the doll. Sara's dark eyes flash in their direction, but she resists the urge to join them and continues reading to her father. Jane believes it is her only birthday supper Roland has attended since she turned sixteen in her brother's home, almost twenty years ago. Not only is he present but unintoxicated, as he was back then.

During the early years of their marriage, she regarded the sober time he spent with her and Llewyllyn as something fragile, like watching a butterfly on a flower — knowing it will lift off and at the same time dreading its departure. Soon enough she came to dread his presence more than his absence, wishing to hasten the transition back into the world she has created for herself and her children. But after years of being able to anticipate his exit from the degree of trembling in his hands or from a slight upturn in his moody withdrawal, she had to admit today that her husband is not as predictable as she thought. Instead of rising late — as he has done since the strike started — drinking a shaky cup of coffee without a word or bite to eat, and leaving the house in dishevelled clothes, Roland had emerged from the bedroom in his best plaid flannel shirt and dark trousers, hair slicked down. His thin neck barely grazed the collar of his buttoned shirt. When he joined his children eating porridge at the table, Llewyllyn got up and left early for school, oatmeal half finished. Jane no longer asks Roland where he is going or when he will return, so his declaration came as a surprise.

“Takin' the train to Nanaimo. Be back for supper.” Her quick glance caused him to add: “Going to see about work at Jingle Pot. Heard they're hiring diggers and drillers.”

The twins raised their heads in unison, waiting for a reply from their mother in this rare morning exchange. None came.

Outings in good clothes have not been common in many mining households since the beginning of the big strike a year and a half ago. Beset by poverty, hardship, violence and even death, Vancouver Island's mining communities continued the standoff between striking mine workers and owners. Always shrewd, the Mackie family made a timely sale of its stakes in Extension and Cumberland to a conglomerate just before the big one began.

Despite his sympathies with the union, Roland has not joined. Brawls break out daily in beer parlours and Jane has gained new insight into her husband's character for withstanding threats and accusations of mugwump from union members. Though he suffers the same unemployment because he will never work as a scab, he claims he cannot ignore the blacklisting against union agitators when it comes to rehiring.

Jane's own emotions have been whipped and tangled by the hatred, like sheets in a wind. She knows good people in every group, including the strikebreakers, and understands that each only wants the most for his family. For her, the biggest shock has been the savagery of the women. Neighbours she has known for years turning on one another and on family members: shrieking, cursing, even pulling one another through the sooty mud that is the natural terrain of Extension. In her estimation, Roland's fencesitting stance has shifted from doubt through blame to where it now rests since the riot of last summer: a grudging approval.

Perhaps because of his neutral position, their little company cottage has survived two assaults. The first was of eviction, then of plunder. As part of a cluster on the edge of the village away from the pithead, it was left untouched when management decided to install its own workers in both the mines and in the company homes of the strikers. Strikebreakers were taken to live in the bullpen, an area close to the pithead protected by special constables. And it was here, near the entrance to the mine, that the violence and destruction reached its peak last August: a mob of angry strikers from Nanaimo, South Wellington, and Ladysmith, armed with picks, shovels, sticks, and guns, marched on the scabs in Extension who had acquired guns themselves and were waiting for them. For a few desperate hours, their valley community of three hundred swelled to fifteen hundred. Tipple area, trestlework, and weigh house were all burned, strikebreakers' families hauled out of their homes before eleven structures were burned and many others ransacked. Chinatown, its dwellings even more squalid than the rest of the rough town, was especially hard hit, due to the men's prejudice toward foreigners — as if the Chinese workers did not have enough against them, what with lower wages, a head tax, and a law prohibiting them from working underground until they were forced back to work by the company or sent home to China.

Jane will never forget the smell of fear and smoke, the shouts of the men, squeals of horses and pigs let loose, cries of women and children fleeing to the woods where they lived in tents for weeks. Roland marched with the strikers, but after the devastation she no longer considers her husband's position on the edge of the mob as cowardice. Especially when soldiers were dispatched from Nanaimo and many strikers put in jail.

And now with the Jingle Pot mine north of Nanaimo settling with the union, he had said “I'll be going then” to the back of Jane's head when he left to seek work.

Once she was sure he was on the road, she had checked the tobacco tin in the kitchen cupboard. She expected more than seventy-five cents to be gone. After the fifty-cent train ride, he would have only twenty-five cents, enough for five beers — just a warm-up for Roland. At least the hotels provided free sandwiches — if he would eat, which he often didn't.

The tin containing both their wages is used for household money. Before the strike, Roland contributed what was left from his pay after stopping at the bar; to this Jane added her seamstress fees. At the age of sixteen, she realized she would always be taking care of herself, and knows enough to keep what she can in reserve. The pouch in her dresser drawer contains as many pennies, nickels, and dimes as she can spare from household necessities, along with a lavender sachet and her two silver confirmation bangles. These are for emergencies, small gifts for the children, and neighbours in need. The sachet fund also buys school supplies for Llewyllyn, lately showing himself to be more and more undeserving of them. Fortunately there is a school in Extension or she would have an even bigger battle forcing him to walk a distance, as they'd had with Gomer. The strike has bought time for her growing son, who by now might otherwise be working at the picking tables or caring for mules.