Lily's Story (79 page)

“It’s a miracle there’s nothin’ broken.”

I’m all right, I’m all
right
: she was trying to make the words
with her lips, fighting the treachery of tears and trying to get
up.

“
Don’t worry, Cora,” the
voice soothed. “It’s me, Bob Denfield. I’ll take care of
you.”

Yes, Cora thought, the Reeve is a man of his
word. Like Arthur.

But my name is
Lily
, she remembered thinking absurdly –
just before the blackness struck again. At least it was,
once.

33

1

I
t was a January
without thaws, that first month of 1922 in the village between the
Lake and the River. The snows were Russian-deep and full of
forgetting. In their beauteous violence, their Arctic grip and
their long quiescence, the memories of Ypes, Passchendaele and the
Somme were permitted a momentary absence. The streetcar from the
City squealed on its icy rails, the smoke from the war-inspired
foundry billowed and froze, the lonesome switching-engine shunted a
desultory box-car or two beside the freight-sheds, the pickerel
beneath the ice dreamt of fingerlings and white sun. In the
meantime, notwithstanding the vagaries of season, commerce
or
réalpolitik
, the
public business of a municipality must proceed.

The council
meetings were held twice a month on Thursdays in the small room
that housed the library. Below it lay the four jail cells normally
unoccupied till the weekend. Next door sat the newly purchased
scarlet fire-engine, close to its crew. If ever there should have
been a fire on a Thursday evening during an odd week of any month,
the council chamber would have been instantly cleared – to a man.
When special meetings of wider public interest
we
re held, as they often had
been during the Great War and its dreadful aftermath, the tiny
library was given over in favour of the more spacious Oddfellows’
Hall next to the old Coote shack. In the opinion of the Reeve,
looking at the agenda for this January evening of 1922, the time
was fast approaching when such a ‘town-meeting’, as their Yankee
neighbours termed it, would have to be called. Tonight, for the
time being, the library-cum-jail would suffice.

As usual, Reeve Denfield was
there early, with his recording secretary, the younger of the
Misses Robertson, staunchly beside him. She had just finished
writing the agenda items on the portable slate blackboard behind
the square table (composed of several reading tables conjoined for
the occasion). They read:

1. Reclamation of the
Coote property

2. Report of the Cenotaph
Finance Committee

3. Setting up a Cenotaph
Search Committee

a. Site

b. Designer,
builder.

As the younger Miss Robertson
finished up with a schoolteacher’s flourish, she flashed a hopeful
smile at Reeve Denfield. It went unacknowledged, however; the Reeve
was deep in a brown study.

“N
o one is more
sensitive than I,” Councillor Stokes was proclaiming from his
pulpit, “as a minister of the Church of England and servant among
you now for these eighteen years, to the plight of this wretched
woman. It would take a heart of stone not to bleed with pity at the
thought of her living out her last days in utter squalor and
loneliness. Our Lord said ‘blessed are the poor in spirit for
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven’, but shall we stand idly by while
Mrs. Coote suffers in her long wait for that Light to shine at last
upon her? I appeal to your conscience as Christians,” and he
gestured dramatically to the far pews.

What did he
know about her long wait? thought the Reeve. About the poor in
spirit? He, too, wanted her out of sight and out of mind, tucked
away safely in a cubicle in an old people’s home, condemned to
slience. Unconsciously he fingered the smooth, pink scald that was
the left side of his face. Behind him he felt the
w
hisper of snow against the
window like the breath of a child.

C
ouncillor Garnet
Fielding – “Choppy” to his cohorts – was on the counter-atttack,
barking orders against the odds to his shell-shocked gunnery. “I
mean no disrespect to the cloth when I say we’ve got no right to
treat the widows and homeguard who stood by us so well during the
darkest days of the War in such a manner. I was born in this
village more than forty years ago, and I was raised to respect, to
revere, my elders. This woman who you youngsters and
Johnny-come-latelys call Granny Coote has been a citizen of the
Point for most of her life. I recall my parents talking about her
heroic actions in the ’seventies, and everyone in this room knows
what she did for us during the terrible autumn of ’eighteen.”
Choppy was surprising everyone, even himself, for he was a laconic
man despite his high school education and his sergeant’s stripes,
his clerk’s job in the City and the Distinguished Service Medal
riveted over his heart. Moreover, his speech was somewhat impeded
by the prosthesis which formed the major part of his jaw. “Took my
breath an’ half my chin away,” he always said in recounting the
explosion that had kept him out of action for several
months.

“
Some
citizen!” huffed Councillor Harold Hitchcock – ‘Half-Hitch’ to his
wife and other detractors. “Thirty years an Alleywoman before old
man Coote went senile an’ rescued her.” He waved his gloved, wooden
hand like a pointer and accepted Miss Robertson’s nod.

“
Would you
like the floor, Hitch?” the Reeve said icily.

“E
veryone in this
room’s been through the hell of war,” Half-Hitch informed the
multitude, brandishing as he did so a legal-looking document
proudly tweezered between his mechanical thumb and forefinger.
“Except one,” he added, looking purposefully away from young Horrie
MacIntosh who somehow – lacking credentials, battle-experience, and
years – had got himself elected to council at the troublesome age
of twenty-four. “We can’t be accused of callousness, we’ve suffered
to much, we’ve lost too much,” he cried through his oscillating
glove. “But the facts’re clear; so is our duty. Accordin’ to this
record in my hand, the village council granted Arthur Coote back in
1888 a lease on the village lot number 82 at one dollar a year for
as long as he remain organist of the Methodist Church and
thereafter if he retire in good standing unto his death.” He had
spent hours memorizing the heady lingo of the document and found
the words in actual presentation happily satisfying, even
appropriate. “My point here is this: we’ve let this woman stay
illegally on municipal land for ten years. We’ve shown mercy and
pity for the wretched soul. But enough is enough. Her contributions
to the community are well known. But everyone here knows what an
eyesore that shack’s turned into. All of us know the stories of how
Granny Coote has scared the sam hell out of children an’ babies
with her crazy babble. An’ last fall you all know she was ridin’ on
a broom in her back yard. How much more can we take?”

“
Hitch is
right,” said Lorne ‘Sandy’ Redmond, the elderly grocer, rousing
himself at last in his chair, the thunder of the Boer guns
receding, the sting of their smoke sharpened by the jabber of Dutch
tongues. “Olive’s asked me to remind the council that the City car
goes right by that shanty every hour. She says she can’t hardly go
to a WCTU meetin’ down there without some gossip or other comin’ up
about Granny Coote. How can those of use who’re older,” and here he
fixed the victims of his jab, “forget she was a shantywoman, a
crony of bootleggers and” – he glanced at the younger Miss
Robertson “– scarlet women, an’ she was a boozer and a heathen to
boot.” He stopped lest the effect be overwhelming. Murmurs of
assent suffused the room.

“
I am
prepared,” said the Reverend Stokes, “to suggest that a public
collection be taken up for the perpetual support of this ancient
citizen who, though she has fallen on sad times, seems worthy of
our forgiveness and charity.”

And we could cast a bronze
medal for her, the Reeve mused, to hang in her miserable vestibule
at Sunset Glades.

More enthusiastic
yeah-saying followed. Young MacIntosh had not yet spoken. It was
three for and one against, so far. Sunny Denfield’s views were well
known. If Horrie were to follow his own feelings, the best that
could be achieved was a tie. Grant Griffiths, the sixth Councillor,
was down at the ‘hospital’ in London being treated for recurring
shell shock, and wouldn’t be back till God-knew-when. Still, he
held back.

“
An’ what’s
your opinion, Horrie?” said the Reeve.

R
eeve Denfield was on
his feet. “The legal aspect of the matter’s clear,” he said very
quietly, a pulsing glow in the garish pink of his war wound. “The
lease to Arthur Coote, accordin’ to our lawyer in the City, was to
last until his death, and if his wife was still livin’, she was to
be allowed to buy the property at market value. When Arthur died,
nobody gave a damn about another vacant lot. Nothin’ was done. Till
now.”

He paused and stared out
at the falling snow as if counting the individual flakes in the
general mass curling over the sill. Then into the shuffle of
embarrassment, he said as if he were confiding to an intimate in a
small room: “So we haven’t any case, one way or the other. But I’d
like to say to you, my friends and fellow soldiers, that I see a
strong link between this discussion and items two an’ three on the
agenda. The buildin’ of the cenotaph, the monument to our dead in
the War, is the most important thing we’ve ever done as a village.
In 1914 we had fifteen hundred souls livin’ here, just over three
hundred families. Two hundred an’ fifty boys an’ men went off to
France in 1915 – almost one per family. Almost a hundred of them
were casualties, almost half of ’em maimed or dead. I’ve got the
two lists here. Most of you could read the names off by heart. We
fought for different reasons, I guess, but all of us were proud to
be from the Point. In the past we survived the greed an’ the
treachery of the railway; we fought off the City politicians an’
big-wigs who’ve been tryin’ to get this town for forty years. When
I came here from the biggest city in 1901, I was eighteen years
old. I saw the vacant lots where the houses had been pulled up by
the roots an’ carted off. It was a ghost town. We built it all back
up board by board. An’ the War tried to do us in again, killin’ an’
maimin’ the best of our men. We owe them a monument.”

The councillors sat stunned, as
shocked as they might have been when the words of a dull sermon
suddenly jelled into meaning.

“
So what are
we doin’? We’re sitting around this table jawin’ away about takin’
a harmless old lady – our most senior citizen who’s fought as hard
as any of us to keep the political chisellers and city-types out of
here – we’re actually thinkin’ of pullin’ her out of the house
she’s lived in for twenty years an’ dumpin’ her in a poorhouse run
by the riff-raff of Sarnia. We’re behavin’ here just like the
people we’ve despised an’ battled against all our lives. Don’t you
see the connection?”

If they didn’t, none of the
municipal legislators was prepared to admit it in this most public
of forums. Young MacIntosh wished he had followed his heart.
Occasionally it paid off.

T
he remainder of the
meeting now progressed smoothly. With luck, the third period of the
hockey match would not be out of reach. When the younger Miss
Robertson opened the door to let the starch out of the steam-heat,
the councillors could hear the drum of wood on wood and the choric
encouragement of the village crowd, could visualize with ease the
violent ballet, and hear the music of silence under it.

First, the
members fell over one another suggesting ways in which the
unfortunate Mrs. Coote could be aided in her final days. It was
agreed unanimously that someone should approach her to explain her
legal position
vis à
vis
the property and assure
her that no precipitate action would be taken. Reeve Denfield
volunteered, but the Reverend Stokes respectfully pointed out that
as a longtime friend and semi-regular visitor to the shack – house
– the Reeve might be perceived by the befuddled old soul to be a
biased report, when what was emphatically needed was someone
official of sufficient probity and evident neutrality who would be
seen by Mrs. Coote to represent the will of the council and the
village. While the Reeve failed to see the logic of this sophistry,
he reluctantly agreed. When the council promptly nominated the good
Anglican pastor for the task, however, he revealed his profound
humility by refusing the proffered honour and suggesting that in
his place go the Reverend Buchan whose Methodism and common touch
were ideally suited to the delicacy of the venture. Moreover, he
himself would speak personally to that man-of-God on the morrow.
The amended motion was passed.

Sandy Redmond then
reported that the finance committee for the cenotaph now had
sufficient monies – in pledges and cash – to allow the project to
move forward to the next stage. He further outlined a series of
benefit hockey games, raffles, spring bazaars and government
promises which would enable the village to erect a glorious
monument. His greengrocer’s eye glowed as he spoke, and a round of
self-inflatory applause ensued that might have shamed the hockey
crowd down on the river flats.