The Age of Water Lilies (9 page)

Then laughing at herself for such a long and excited reply to Flora's simple comment, she left her friend to unpack, saying that they would have supper outdoors that evening.

When Flora woke in the flowery bed the next morning, it took a moment for her to remember where she was. From where she lay, from a gap between the curtains, she could see branches of aspen trembling in the early morning air; she could hear magpies and the creak of a floorboard as someone hesitated outside her bedroom door.

“Hello?” she called and was rewarded by the appearance of Jane carrying a tray holding a pot of tea and two cups.

“I thought I'd bring you tea in bed! And then I thought, But why don't I take a cup for myself too and then we can talk! What would you like to do today, Flora? It's going to be beautiful. I was up early to see Allan off—they're checking on some cattle in the upper pasture—and saw the sun rise. Not a cloud in the sky!”

They settled in on Flora's bed, sipping hot tea and chatting. Jane remarked on the lace edging the bodice of Flora's nightdress, asking was it Flemish? It was not. It was Honiton, coming from that area of Devon made famous for its bobbin lace and where Flora's mother went regularly to buy fine trimmings for her dressmaker to use on clothing for herself and her daughter. That led Jane to suggest a sewing activity they could work on under the shady trees a little later in the morning.

“I've just learned this method of making a camisole. I've been accumulating handkerchiefs, my mother sent me a box of them she found in Vancouver, so say you'll do it with me, Flora, say you will? It's no fun to sew these little gems alone.”

“How could I refuse?” smiled Flora.

After a breakfast of warm biscuits—“Our Chinese cook has a very light hand with pastry and biscuits. These are almost a scone, don't you think? But I wish we could get him to realize that a piece of beef is not leather and doesn't need to be boiled for hours”—and dark bitter marmalade that gave Flora a small pang of homesickness for its resemblance to the preserves of the Watermeadows kitchen, the two women gathered sewing things and went out to the yard.

“Here, let's put this stuff on the table and then I'd like to show you around a little,” said Jane, indicating a wicker table and chairs under a spreading tree. They walked to the big barn where sunlight lit the long central walkway between stalls. Most of the horses were turned out, but one mare and her filly remained in a box stall, awaiting (Jane said) the ministrations of a ranch hand for a gash on the mare's hock.

Another smaller barn was completely empty but for its hayloft; it was the winter home of the milk cow and a few goats. Sheds held equipment and tack. Everything was neat and orderly; a pair of perfectly matched cats sat on either side of the gate leading into the nearest pasture.

“Allan's family has been here for two generations. Or three, now, with us. They came from Scotland, for the usual reasons, I suppose: a small piece of property and too many sons for it to be divided in any way that would allow for a decent living to be possible. Allan's grandfather couldn't believe that such large parcels were available here. The water rights were a little more difficult—Cargyles, for instance, were forced away by having their right to water reneged upon, and they went reluctantly because they had been first here and truly loved it—but really Grandfather McIntyre put so much labour into this ranch and hoped his sons and grandsons would carry on his name, continuing to care for this land.”

“Which Allan is certainly doing,” Flora exclaimed as she looked at the pastures stretching down to the dusty road, the supple poplars lining the driveway, the healthy garden. “And children, Jane? Are you planning to have children or is that too personal a question to ask? This place would be heaven for children . . .”

Jane said in a quiet voice that she'd had three miscarriages; although her doctor had told her there was no reason why she should not have a child, she wondered if it would ever happen.

“I think of those poor wee babies, a bit like ghosts now, and feel very uncertain about carrying a child to term. Allan is perhaps more optimistic than I am. He's also very patient, which I don't think most men would be. I said I was keeping a life list of birds and some days it seems that there is a death list also, of the lost babies. I wouldn't tell Allan that. He would call it morbid. But each time I was so excited to be expecting a child and then . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and she touched her eyes with a hanky. Flora had told Jane some weeks previously about Grace and how she had felt sorrow at the brief time that baby had spent on earth. Mary's sadness, the droop of her shoulders as she scrubbed clothes, dusted, sat alone in a chair with some mending: these spoke to a dimension of a woman's life that Flora could only wonder at. She had not known that Jane had anticipated birth and then had her joy taken from her prematurely. She embraced her friend. And of course it was Allan's loss too, for surely he had imagined himself a father, holding a child. A son who might ride these pastures as a father himself.

Flora had felt she had entered a rich and mysterious place with Gus, almost a secret world (and indeed no one knew of their meetings, certainly not of their lovemaking), in which she imagined the two of them were alone in the sensations they experienced on the boughs in Agrippa's family's cabin, under the apple trees, in coulees far from Walhachin. She wore both her anticipation and the memory of these encounters like a delicate garment, aware of its invisible weight upon her bare skin. She hadn't thought that others shared this mysterious pleasure and that it might develop into something else. A marriage would contain both a past and a future as well as the day to day. And the quotidian might include the possibility of children, both their births and their untimely deaths.

“We will not talk about this anymore this morning, Flora,” said Jane, taking her friend's arm and leading back to the arrangement of chairs under the shady tree. “We'll make pretty underthings instead!”

Jane reached into her workbasket and took out a handful of light cotton. It moved a little in the breeze like thistledown.

“We take three of the handkerchiefs, fold them in half on the diagonal, and press them—I've done that already, as you can see—and then cut them along the fold. That gives us six triangles and we arrange them like this . . .”

Jane laid out her pieces of fine lawn like a puzzle on the tabletop, showing how the front and the back of the camisole would look.

“. . . and then we sew them together with bands of lace in-between the sections, and look! My mother has sent a lot of lace, though none of it as fine as your Honiton. I've got these tiny pearl buttons we can use for a little fastening, well, what do you think, under the arm or down the front seams? And of course lace for the shoulder straps. Do you like them, Flora?”

“So lovely, Jane! I would never have thought of using handkerchiefs this way. Oh, what a good idea.”

They began to sort through the assembled hankies, matching up plain ones with lengths of pretty lace. There was satin ribbon too, narrow widths in pale pink and blue, and Jane had the idea of threading it through some of the lace in order to create soft gathers to size the neck openings a little more precisely. They cut and then pieced their triangles together with the tiny stitches they'd learned at their mother's knees, silver thimbles aiding the work. They held up the camisoles to see the progress of their work. At one point, Flora held her camisole to her chest and danced under the shady tree while Jane watched, smiling.

Then, out of the blue: “You are looking remarkably well, Flora. It's almost as though you were in love . . .”

Flora felt heat rise from her chest to her face. Was it that obvious? She had thought of Gus as her own dear secret. Not that she wanted him to be a secret forever, but she could not think of how they might present their affection for each other to, say, her brother. Or her parents. She knew her brother respected Gus, but that would not necessarily translate to acceptance, would it? While still in England, preparing to come to Walhachin, she had heard that the colonies were classless, but she had not yet seen evidence of this. Miss Flowerdew would not allow men to enter her establishment unless they were dressed appropriately—Flora could not imagine Gus bothering to put on a collar or tie, though he must own such things. And there was an attitude in Walhachin not so different to what she'd left in Wiltshire, that labourers did not even really speak the same language as their employers, that women needed to be sheltered from such people, that a person's breeding was implicit in the care they took to remember such details as gloves and cards. Local ranchers were seldom invited to the monthly balls at the hall, there were mutterings about “trade” and “belowstairs” when certain names came up. Gus was apart from much of this. He was not Chinese, not Indian—those were obvious and had a place. His accent and vocabulary indicated an education, his table manners at the few events where labourers ate with their employers were curious for their excellence. No one could place him, quite. And he told Flora he liked it that way.

“Jane, is it so obvious?”

“Flora, you positively glow! Your skin, your eyes—you have the look of someone who has found out the secret of youth and beauty, which love surely provides. That little smile that plays upon your lips like a few bars of secret music. May I ask to whom you owe this bliss?”

“I will tell you, Jane, but you must promise me that you will say nothing about it, not even to Allan. There is someone special, yes, and I am not ashamed of him, but we are not yet ready to tell the world, not even George. Will you promise me, my dear and curious friend? Because quite honestly I am dying to tell someone.”

Jane assented.

“It is Gus, Jane. Gus Alexander. He works for my brother from time to time, and of course other orchardists too. You will understand why it is a little difficult to make this known right now, but what you don't know perhaps is that Gus is not entirely what he appears. He comes from reputable people actually and has set out to make his own life. There is a past, of that I am certain. He is quite cut off from his parents who live in Victoria and whom he has not seen in seven years. But he is wonderful, and . . .”

Jane cut in. “Make no apologies, Flora. I have always liked Gus, as does Allan—did you know he'd worked here one summer, during haying? And Allan always felt there was no one like him for the breaking of young horses. Gus never called it ‘breaking' though; he said he was gentling them, and watching a colt new to the saddle under him, it was easy to understand why. His voice, so calm, and he never wore spurs. Didn't need them. Horses responded to him gladly. And yes, you're right to acknowledge that there is a past. I think it involved debts of some sort. Something mysterious and rather dark. But there is also intelligence. He's extremely capable and, well, it must be said, he is devastatingly handsome!”

Flora blushed. She thought so too, of course. She remembered how she had gone quite faint at the sight of Gus's wrists, the undersides of his arms, that first day they had ridden together to the sad house in Skeetchestn where Grace was dying even as they let their horses lope along the Deadman River. Little did she know then that a man's arms were just a suggestion of his body unclothed, the beauty of the skin at the tops of his thighs, the curve of his buttocks. And that the beauty was accompanied by such pleasure as the man in turn admired the skin of the woman, touching it with tenderness. No one had told her of these things, prepared her for the way her body craved the weight of his body on top of her or the shape of it beneath her, ballast between her and the sky, a firm anchor between her and the earth.

“One problem, Jane, is my family. At least I think this will be a problem anyway. George may well like Gus as a worker but as a consort for his sister? I suspect not. And the fact that I have been meeting him secretly? Oh my goodness, George will be furious about that. But I am determined now to make my own decisions about my life, though I am still too nervous to tell any of my family that I am doing so! I am praying for more courage. Gus tells me I am developing a mind of my own. No wonder. If I mention a rule or an objection of George's to a particular thing, Gus encourages me to think about it for myself and break the rule if it suits me to do so. But not openly, not yet. So I will confess I've developed a taste for malt whisky. There. It feels good to say it!”

Jane smiled at Flora's confession. “Love does make us flout the rules a little, I think. And I, too, like the occasional glass of whisky. I've never understood why it is taken for granted that a woman would prefer Pimm's Cup. Ugh.” She shivered extravagantly.

Gradually over the next few days, Flora found herself confiding more in Jane than she had ever done with a friend. A married woman, Jane could discreetly provide information to her friend, could answer questions Flora would never have asked her mother, a beloved but remote presence, even when they'd lived in the same house. Flora had vague but confused ideas about her body and its workings. Jane was able to set her straight on aspects of the monthly cycle, irregularities, and discomfort.

“It has always amazed me,” said Jane, “that girls enter into womanhood without the simplest knowledge of any of this. Why weren't we taught these things in school? At least as important as the date Caesar crossed the Rubicon or Alps or whatever it was he did. I was lucky; my aunty Hortense is something of a suffragette, and she took it upon herself to tell me about reproduction. She even had a little chart. I remember her quizzing me on, well, the ovaries. At our coming-out ball in Vancouver, one girl had her entire evening ruined for her when a red patch appeared on her white dress. She hadn't known to expect her monthlies, thought the whole thing was a terrible injury. And was of course mortified in front of a room of people, none of whom will ever forget. So an injury, I expect, is an accurate way to describe it.”