Since Mary’s lying-in earlier in the year, I endured wasted nights and days. Worse, I had taken to drowning my depression in laudanum. Once I found out that it was readily available at Mr.Allan’s store without authorization from my quack doctor-brother Grant, I no longer had to steal Mama’s stash.
I had looked forward to getting away to Queenston for a few weeks and when that hope faded, I stupidly allowed myself to sink into a black hole. My mood was undoubtedly deepened by Papa’s ongoing comments that Mary’s successful birthing without my assistance showed that midwifery was indeed “bunkum.”
I was far worse than Eliza. Though she had “submitted”—as she phrased it—to my parents’ ideas and wishes, she managed to stay pleasant and balanced. Nor was I able to achieve York’s standards of female “success” by emulating Mary, who had assumed the role of wife and mother. In these recent months I had gone—I do not think it was an exaggeration to say it—crazy.
Laudanum temporarily banished my pain. It sank me into a mindless lethargy. But I knew that I had to conquer my reliance on it. I stole into Mama’s bedchamber from time to time and read her newly published copy of Thomas de Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. I had no idea where she got the book. I only knew that she, too, must worry about her addiction—or perhaps mine. But it was not something I could discuss with her.
How perceptive this de Quincy was about his addiction to laudanum. On the one hand, he called it “a panacea for all human woes . . . happiness may now be bought for a penny.” On the other hand, he admitted that at times it sent him sinking “into chasms and sunless abysses . . . amounting at last to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency.”
Just last week I resolved to visit my brother John and his wife Isabella in their new brick home in Niagara. I thought that I could be of help with their two young sons and perhaps renew my acquaintance with Mrs. Dickson. Mama was in favour of this idea and even went so far as to offer to give me funds for the trip. This plan buoyed me through several days, and then the news broke.
She read me a letter from Isabella one morning at the breakfast table. It was a heart-breaker. Their small son had died. Broken by grief, John had become an alcoholic. Isabella had turned to religion—and not Mama’s religion. Her words in this letter destroyed my hopes. There was no way they would want me in their lives at this time. They had enough to contend with.
* * *
Late this morning I dragged myself out of bed and forced myself to look into the mirror on the wall above the bureau. My appearance appalled me: greasy hair, grey complexion, chapped lips. I made an instant resolve to take myself in hand.
I had Lucy bring me up enough hot water to fill the bathtub in my bedchamber. I washed my hair and body, smoothed almond oil into my face, pinched my cheeks to bring back their colour, and then looked into the mirror again. A definite improvement! Next, I took the bottle of laudanum from the captain’s chest at the foot of the bed and dumped its contents out the window onto the rose bed below.
When I went downstairs, I found Eliza already at work embroidering a pattern on a kneeling cushion for our church pew. “Put that away, dear sister,” I said, “and let us go to the market. If Lucy goes with us, Mama will surely not object. We shall tell her we’re going to get some fresh strawberries so that Cook can make shortcake for tonight’s meal.”
* * *
The market had been rebuilt about a year previously, a long, low wooden structure replacing the simple shack of earlier days. It was a meeting place for all of the townsfolk, and I spotted Jacques Vallière immediately, accompanied by a tall, pretty woman and a young boy whom I did not at first recognize. Also with them was Sancho, spit dog of yore, who forgot his advanced age and linked us by bounding towards me, tail wagging and mouth open in a wide doggy grin.
I immediately set Eliza to looking over the strawberries, getting her out of the way so that I could talk to Jacques without her overhearing our conversation.
“Bonjour, Guy,” he said to me, smiling at our little joke, and turning to introduce the woman with him. “This is my sister Marguerite, and her son Jean Paul.”
“I remember you well, Miss Powell,” she said. “You helped me through a difficult time many years ago. Do you remember that time?”
Well, it all came back to me then: the memory of that night when her brother and Lucy took me north to the Vallières’ one-room cabin and my first experience as a midwife. I remembered the squalor of the place—the stink of cabbage and unemptied chamberpots—and the pitiful wailing of Marguerite, the unfortunate amour of Quetton St. George, who had left York to return to his native France in 1815, his pockets lined with a good deal of money from his merchant life. And this Jean Paul, now a tall young boy, was undoubtedly the babe I had helped the old granny deliver.
We talked for several minutes, Marguerite whispering in my ear that she had put aside her hatred for St. George. “Without him, I would not have this son who is now the centre of my universe.”
It was all pleasant, but when Eliza returned with the strawberries, I had to say goodbye.
“Who were those people to whom you were talking?” she asked. “And wasn’t that dog the one you exchanged for the clock jack?”
“Just a family to whom Mr. Strachan and the ladies of his congregation gave some food and clothing recently, and the dog was certainly a look-alike of Sancho—but no relation,” I said, laughing. I had no intention of letting Eliza in on my secrets. She might blab everything to Mama.
We headed home, passing the animal pens where cattle and sheep were sold live and slaughtered on site for freshness. The stink of blood was overpowering, but less upsetting than the cries of a man in the town square just a few feet west of the market. Eliza tugged at my sleeve. “Let’s just take a peek at what is going on,” she said.
We joined a few shoppers who were gawking at a man of middle age suspended against a rectangular wooden frame, his outstretched arms tied to the top of the frame and his legs outspread and roped to the bottom. Blood streamed from his back as the sheriff’s man lashed him. Nearby the sheriff counted aloud the number of strokes being administered. “Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven . . .”
I could bear no more and turned away, Eliza following me. “He gets forty-five lashes, the bugger. He stole two chickens from a nearby farm,” someone said. I could think only of how Sam Jarvis who murdered John Ridout in a duel had gone free and was now a prosperous lawyer and my sister’s husband. Better in these so-called enlightened times to be a gentleman murderer than a petty common thief.
The afternoon at the market provided me with another glimpse of a larger world far removed from my own narrow sphere. Once more I longed to escape and to be part of that world and to do what I could to better it. I would find a way.
* * *
Mama seemed pleased with the strawberries and set Cook to work at once to make scones on which we would later pile strawberries and whipped cream. “You must busy yourself, Anne,” she said. “Eliza is occupied with her embroidery, and you have done little to help out in any way.”
She handed me a large whisk made of birch twigs. “Whip the cream.” A simple command that I carried out for the next half hour, almost dislocating my wrist in the process. Lucy chipped some sugar from the sugar cone, pulverized it with a pestle, and added it to the cream.
“Yum,” we said, licking the sides of the mortar.
“Is this for Papa’s supper?” I asked as Mama came into the kitchen to see how we were faring.
“No, I’m taking it to Governor Maitland’s picnic tomorrow on the lawn of Elmsley House. Have you forgotten all about that? Pull yourself together, Anne. Lady Sarah has asked you to open the event with a few words of welcome.”
“And why, pray, was I not consulted about my role in this event?”
“I considered it a great honour that the Governor’s wife would condescend to ask that you undertake this small task. Of course, I said ‘yes.’ You must choose that simple white dress you sometimes wear, flat shoes for the grass, and I shall lend you a gold necklace.” She paused to scrutinize me. “You look much better today, but for tomorrow I recommend a light surface of rouge. I very much regret the cutting-off of your hair, but what can we do?” She paused for a moment, obviously considering a solution to my cropped top. “I shall try to find a muslin cap for you,”
“Forget it, Mama. I will not wear a cap under any circumstances. Nor will I wear rouge.” For a moment, there flashed into my mind a long-ago memory of my erstwhile “lover,” John Beverley Robinson, reading from “The Rape of the Lock” with its lines about Belinda readying herself for the ball, using all the “cosmetic pow’rs” available to her, including the rouge that called forth “a purer blush.” If he were present at this damned picnic tomorrow, how he would laugh if he saw my pitiful attempts to disguise the reality of my age and appearance.
Mama sighed and turned away. Evidently, I had won this round.