What the Heart Keeps (8 page)

She
returned to Sherbourne Street in a fury of frustration. Not long afterwards she had cause again to rage against dubious circumstances. A widower came to collect an exceptionally pretty child for adoption. Well dressed, and with a cultured voice, he made a generous donation to the society in appreciation of its charitable work, but Lisa felt an instinctive abhorrence for him. Shut out by Miss Drayton, she implored Miss Lapthorne to intervene on the child’s behalf and not let her be taken away by him.

“
Don’t be foolish, Lisa. He’s a gentleman,” Miss Lapthorne replied inanely. “He has a fine home in Ottawa and our fortunate orphan will lack for nothing. There’s no need to worry that he has no wife. He has assured Miss Drayton that his housekeeper is a most motherly soul.”

Lisa
trembled for the fate of that child. She had not grown up in an orphanage without learning a great deal of life through the experiences of other inmates. Her loathing of Miss Drayton increased, knowing that the woman must have closed her eyes to the obvious. Miss Lapthorne, on the other hand, was curiously innocent. For that reason alone, Lisa was able to forgive her for many stupidities.

Another
year dawned. Lisa passed her sixteenth birthday. The mirror in her room had reflected changes in her face and figure. She put up her hair into a knot at the top of her head. She sewed her own clothes. Although officially she still received no wages, Miss Lapthorne, perhaps fearful that she might leave for fully paid employment, made sure she received a small amount of money regularly out of the petty cash. If Lisa had not known herself to be a comfort and a refuge to many of the bewildered children who arrived at the Distribution Home, she would not have stayed. In moments of depression, she could see herself ending her days as another Miss Lapthorne. At least she had no desire to marry. Her single terrible experience had closed such doors for her.

She
often wished she had someone to talk to about everything and knew whom she would have chosen. In her little room she had a small Norwegian flag tucked into the corner of a framed text on the wall. She had cut it out from an old magazine illustrating in rather gaudy colours the flags of all nations. It kept Peter Hagen in the forefront of her mind. Not that she thought that she would ever forget him. More than that, the proximity of the flag to the words of blessing seemed to her to be a means of ensuring his safekeeping wherever he might happen to be.

Four

Peter
Hagen had been in the United States for more than three years on the late August day in 1906 when he alighted from a train that had brought him to Toronto from Buffalo. If there was any difference in his appearance, apart from his being much better dressed, it lay in his muscular development, the last trace of the ranginess of youth lost in the full physique of a powerful man. There was little that he had not done in the way of heavy work since being pushed around and kept waiting and hustled along in the sheds of Ellis Island. His fierce Viking pride had made it difficult to tolerate the arrogance of officials, but once he was on the mainland he forgot his resentment in his interest in all there was to see. He had thought Bergen a big city, but New York was the size of many Bergens, and noisier by night and day than any avalanche he had ever heard.

With
his box on his shoulder, his homespun attire marking him out as a newly arrived immigrant, he had stared at everything from the windows of the stores to the handsome mansions on Fifth Avenue. He had an address in his pocket. There probably was not a Norwegian anywhere who set out on a journey, either at home or abroad, without a list of hospitable anchorages where he would be given a meal and a place to sleep by a relative, friend, or somebody recommended by either of the former. It was hospitality that was gladly returned in full measure when the opportunity arose, and Peter did not have the slightest doubt of his welcome when he knocked on the door of a third-floor apartment in a tough-looking section of the city.

The
family who lived there were cousins of his cousin, their origins in Sognefjord, and his hand was nearly shaken off his wrist in their joy at seeing someone from the old country. They sat him at a table, plied him with food and strong coffee, and all sat around to watch him eat while they fired a ceaseless barrage of questions. He wondered if in them he was seeing himself in the future, well satisfied with life in America but unable to lose a gut-wrenching homesickness for what had been left behind. For the second generation, American-born and regarding him quietly with the natural good manners of contented children, there were the links of heritage, but never would they know an unappeased yearning for the breath-taking beauty of a fjord-riven land.

He
slept the night on the sofa and the next day took a room of his own in the neighbourhood. His cousin’s cousin was a carpenter and told him where to apply for work. For six months he worked on a building site in downtown New York. Mountains had given him a head for heights and from the first day he had walked along scaffolding without a qualm. He bought himself a good suit of clothes and enjoyed himself in hours of leisure. Pretty women were attracted to him and he lacked for nothing in his personal life. It irritated him that he was frequently taken for an Englishman by the way he spoke the language with what was called an English accent. No one could be more thoroughly Norwegian than he. Nevertheless, his fluency was admired and he was invited to teach English to two Scandinavian immigrants who were finding it hard to make themselves understood. When he arrived at the place of venue, he found that six more had come along to take advantage of the opportunity. When the numbers swelled to twenty-six by the next session, he divided them into two classes on separate evenings and soon had the same number again in each. He charged them a small fee, which helped his finances, and before long he was giving lessons for five evenings of the week. Saturdays and Sundays he kept free for his own affairs.

Gradually
the novelty of city life began to pall. He was a countryman at heart and he had not come to the United States to turn into a New Yorker without keeping to his resolve to see as much as possible of the country before striking roots. His brother, Jon, with whom he was in spasmodic correspondence, suggested he go out West to join up with him, but he was not yet ready to leave the East. He packed his good clothes into his travelling box and donned some practical wear, his emigrant suit long since thrown away. He said goodbye to his cousin’s cousins and left the city. During the next two years he worked on farms and in forests, never staying long in any place. The wages fluctuated, sometimes little more than a pittance, but he was breathing pure air, liking the experience of new horizons, and went cheerfully about the most arduous and back-breaking tasks. Travel never cost him anything. He became expert at judging the right moment to leap a wall or break the cover of a bush as one of the great trains began to pull slowly out of a railway station, or from a coal and water halt. On reaching one of the unlocked boxcars, he would shoot back the door and throw in his travelling box before heaving himself up and aboard. Sometimes the car would be occupied already by one or more men, and although there were always the villains who had to be watched, there was on the whole a curious camaraderie among those who rode the rails. Many boxcars were padded with wads of paper and from the others he learned how these could be pulled off and used as wrappings for warmth when the weather was cold. At junctions they sometimes all jumped off and made a short camp, brewing coffee over a fire. Those with nothing begged a hand-out from local people and usually returned with something to eat or drink. Peter made sure he was never in those straits and, as a precaution against thieves, kept his money in a wallet-belt inside his shirt.

He
had worked in areas of New England and Ohio before he arrived on the outskirts of Buffalo and secured employment in a large stable where horses of every type were bought and sold. His uncle in Norway had kept a pair of carriage horses for the English visitors, and a number of gentlemen had always brought their own riding horses with them, which meant there was nothing he did not know about grooming and caring for fine bloodstock. On the farms and in the forest work he had done more recently, he had dealt with big draught horses. At a stud-farm he had met up again with some of the fine shire horses that had aroused his admiration when he had first seen them on the streets and in the fields of England.

It
was his good fortune that the stud groom was a gnarled old Englishman who warmed to a shared interest in the magnificent animals and was willing to pass on knowledge to a keen young stable lad. From him Peter learned the points to look for in order to judge quality of breeding in addition to working ability. Not only did these great horses have to have a commanding appearance, but the well-balanced head must be lean with a certain breadth between large, docile eyes, the ears sharp and sensitive and necks slightly arched. Shoulders were all-important, as were full-muscled hindquarters and legs with sinews like fine cords. Girth was anything up to eight feet, and the weight of a good horse varied between seventeen and eighteen hundredweight.

His
knowledgeable approach to horses and his energetic attitude soon earned him promotion at the Buffalo stables. He began to accompany his employer to sales. Now and again they went to New York to meet special shipments. After deals were completed, it became Peter’s responsibility to ship anything from a hundred to two hundred horses on a special Wells Fargo Pacific Express train to Nebraska and elsewhere. Before long, he was being entrusted to buy and sell on his own, earning himself commission on top of his wages.

He
was representing his employer on a mission to Toronto when he emerged from the portals of the railway station and looked about him. If any one from his native land could have seen him in his well-cut suit, a heavy gold watch-chain looped across his waistcoat, and a wide-brimmed Panama hat shading his eyes from the August sun, they would have thought he had become a millionaire. Recently he had had his photograph taken for his aunt, knowing it would please her to see him looking well and prosperous. He could imagine it framed and set in a place of honour, probably beside a picture of the new King Haakon of Norway.

Remembering
directions he had been given, he walked along to book in at Walker House, a hotel on the corner of Front and York streets, which had been recommended to him. His only luggage was a leather valise which he carried whenever he went on business trips. At his Buffalo lodgings his old pine travelling box, much battered by its rough journeyings, was handy for storage. He did not expect to use it again until travelling some far distance after leaving his present employment, for already he was forming plans for going into business on his own. He expected to learn a great deal about the Canadian trade in heavy horses when he attended a sale on the morrow. His employer wanted some good Percherons shipped in via Montreal from France, which meant that his own preference for English shire horses would have to be put aside.

In
his hotel room he unpacked a few things before setting off to an address in Shuter Street. There he spent a long time viewing the horses for sale, making notes for reference during the auction on the morrow, and gradually making up his mind which of the horses should earn his bid. Afterwards, with time on his hands, he decided to have a look around the city which he had never visited before. Soon he found himself in the busy commercial area of Yonge Street. When he paused to look at some pens in the window of a stationers’ store, he had no idea that inside a customer, waiting for her change after making a purchase, had sighted and recognised him. As he strolled on again, he did not pay any attention to footsteps running after him until his name was spoken.

“
Mr. Hagen! Peter!”

He
swung around in astonishment, acquainted with no one in Toronto and at a loss to suppose who might know him by name. It added to his bewilderment when he saw that the girl who had addressed him was a complete stranger as far as he could tell. Or, on second thoughts, was there something vaguely familiar about her that was striking a chord at the back of his memory? Politely he raised his hat.

“
You have the advantage of me, Miss — er — ?”

“
Shaw. Lisa Shaw. Don’t you remember me? We met at Liverpool docks when you were sailing to New York and I was bound for Canada.” She smiled. It was a beautiful, happy smile that gave an additional sparkle to her fine hazel eyes. “I never had the chance to thank you for the candies you gave me for the children.”

It
all came back to him. He recalled his compassion for the ill-clad waif saddled with the responsibility of looking after far too many children on her own — in his opinion. Then a sour-faced woman had attacked her for talking to him. “Yes! I remember. Of course I do!” He took her hand and shook it in reunion. “What luck to meet you again, Lisa.”

He
meant it. She was no longer so painfully thin, and although still slender, she had filled out into soft curves of breast and hips with a narrow waist. Her hair, no longer straggling, was pinned up prettily under a hat of coarse straw, a curling tendril or two by her ears. Her dress was of cheap cotton, indicating that her circumstances had not vastly improved in the interim of their two meetings. But she was one of those fortunate girls who made anything they wore a natural enhancement of figure and grace and sexual allure.

“
I was in that stationers’ store,” she said, half turning from the waist to indicate the location, “when I spotted you. What are you doing in Toronto?”

“
It’s quite a tale,” he said, “and I want to know what has been happening to you. Here, let me take your parcel from you. That’s better. It’s too heavy for you to carry. Tell me where we can sit and talk without interruption.”

Lisa
thought for a moment before suggesting the Horticultural Gardens. Although Sherbourne Street flanked one side of its ten acres, Miss Drayton was back in England doing some fund-raising and collecting another consignment of children, which meant there was no danger of abuse through being seen in his company.

They
found a park bench in the shade. He rested an arm behind her along the back of it as they sat down. All around them were colourful flowerbeds and the air was fragrant. He inhaled deeply in appreciation.

“
That scent reminds me of the Molde rose,” he said nostalgically.

“
What rose is that?” she asked, removing her hat and combing her fingers into her hair to lift it slightly where the crown had flattened its softness. “I’ve never heard of it.”

He
smiled. “It’s a dark red bloom with a heavy fragrance that grows exclusively in a little place of a few hundred inhabitants on the south facing slopes of the Molde fjord. Town of the Roses is the name most commonly used. I know it well. It lies only a matter of miles from the valley where I was born.”

“
It must be a beautiful spot.”

“
Once seen, it can never be forgotten.”

She
tilted her head inquiringly. “You’re not homesick, are you?”

He
laughed. “No! There’s too much to see and do all the time. In any case, I can say truthfully that I feel I belong to this part of the world now. My whole attitude has changed. I’m a Norwegian-American. What about you? Have you settled down?”

She
considered carefully. “I miss the gentleness of an English spring, but then, nothing can surpass a Canadian autumn. I suppose I still have divided loyalties.”

“
Tell me about yourself, Lisa.”

“
Not yet.” She was adamant. “You first.”

He
made no protest and related his adventures, describing the work he had done and mentioning the distances he had travelled. He concluded by explaining his purpose in coming to Toronto. She listened attentively, his manner of speech still enhanced for her by his Norwegian accent. Her gaze never left his face. She had thought him fine-looking when she had first set eyes on him. Now she found him truly handsome. How very relaxed he was, and how quick to smile and chuckle. It was easy to see that all was going well for him, and she would have liked to have matched his new worldliness with some poise and sophistication. But she always had to be herself, just as she was. It never occurred to her that therein lay her particular charm.