NINE
Someone Who Talks Back
IT WAS PITCH DARK by five o’clock in the afternoon. A hanging paraffin lamp made the dining table shine like a stage in the shadowed room. Flora set down a bowl of stew; steam furled as she lifted the lid.
Hands, reaching for ladle. For salt and pepper shakers.
“I seen your light down on the corner, Mr. Sprague,” murmured Miss Harvey, lifting her fork with ink-stained fingers.
“I endeavour to please,” he said. He fussed through his stew with the tines of his fork, turning over pieces of potato, carrot, turnip.
Flora left and returned with a covered bowl of buttermilk biscuits. She set down the bowl in front of Jasper Tuck. He glanced her way. Keeps to himself, Flora thought, with a pang of hurt. Even though they had spoken together a few times, he did not acknowledge her as anything other than a servant.
She checked the table. Pitcher of tea. Milk and sugar. Butter on a covered china plate. Water in Josephine’s plainest glassware. Dilly beans in a dish. Sweet pickles, sliced cheese.
“That fellow who was here, George Francis Train,” Mr. Sprague said. He took a breath, preparing to hold forth. He was fascinated by The Comet, as Train referred to himself, who had exposed the pauper auction. Flora paused on her way out, pretending to inspect the candles. “We thought he was a crank—but you know he truly did go around the world in eighty days. I was reading about it. New York to San Francisco, seven days. Clipper ship to Yokohama, then over to Singapore. Up to France, across to Liverpool, back to New York. Imagine that. And he really did own a town in Omaha. He really did have a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. I seen a picture of it.” He paused to break open a biscuit, reached with a knife for a pat of butter. Lips pursed, he spread his biscuit with tiny dabs. Silver and glassware gleamed in the pool of light. “He’s fallen on hard times now. Gone bust.”
Flora ate her stew in the kitchen, along with Josephine, Ellen and Maud. Occasionally, she rose to check the boarders’ progress. She cleared the table, served tapioca pudding, listened for the scraping of chairs and the thud of footfall—into the parlour, up the stairs.
When the dishes were done, Josephine bid them goodnight, saying she had a headache and was going to bed. Maud and Flora exchanged glances. The quieter Josephine became, the more, it seemed, her grief deepened.
Maud decided to study in the kitchen, where it was warm. Ellen settled in her rocking chair with her knitting.
“Couldn’t you sell those, Ellen?” Flora asked.
“Who would want my old mittens, now,” Ellen said. Her voice was exasperated, as if her mittens, like herself, were without value, and it had been rude of Flora to point this out.
“I didn’t—”
“Anyone can make a mitten.” A thumb was growing, stitches shifting from needle to needle on a spiky triangle.
The two girls exchanged another glance. Neither understood the reason for Ellen’s unpredictable moods, yet they were complicit in their tolerance. Flora untied her apron and hung it on the back of the door, feeling that she had space within herself to absorb Ellen’s prickly retorts. She had a room of her own, a quarterly stipend now, all the food she could eat, and a status in the household that revealed itself like a plant, its growth imperceptible but steady.
“I’m going up to read,” Flora said.
Maud ran a hand down the seam of her open book, smoothing. “Come down if you need help.”
Flora caught Ellen’s sharp observance and felt a sear of frustration. Ellen wanted Flora to remain forever at the back of the house, in the kitchen, a procurer of needs, whereas she expected to see Maud finish her education, marry, and have a house such as this one had been before Simeon’s death.
“You learned to read,” Maud remarked, also noticing Ellen’s expression.
“Yes, but I know my place.” The rocking chair and the needles went faster.
“What a thing to say, Ellen. If Flora wants to become educated, there’s every reason in the world she should. Don’t you be like one of those—”
Maud paused, pursuing her thought.
“Look at what they did to Mother when the will couldn’t be found. Those men. With their laws. Saying she had to go to court to claim her own children as hers.”
Flora went up the back stairs into the chill of the hallway. One dim gaslight mounted on the wall illuminated the spruce floorboards. Josephine’s door was cracked open for heat; she could see a slice of light. Her own room was freezing. She wrapped herself in a yellow and brown plaid shawl and sat at a small table. She had stood the books that Maud had brought her from the school so that their spines were impeccably aligned. Embossed titles gleamed, golden.
The Practical Speller.
An English Grammar with copious and carefully graduated exercises.
Literary Extracts.
A Practical Introduction to Arithmetic.
Shavings dropped into the wastebasket as she sharpened her pencil with a small knife.
She began writing out tonight’s spelling words: obvious, thorough, simplicity, courageous, impetuous, field, yield, incessant.
She worked until she could no longer keep her eyes open, writing these words over and over, until both penmanship and spelling were perfect.
Every Saturday, Flora had a half day off. She felt guilty.
“I could do the baking,” she said. She had put her apron on, pretending to forget that it was Saturday.
“Go,” Josephine said. She did not meet Flora’s eyes, as if to open herself to sympathy was a thing she could not bear. She waved her hand, the motion unnecessarily emphatic. “Leave everything behind, do something nice.”
None of the women in the house had any enthusiasm for the holiday. They were not making cookies or new decorations for the tree. The tree had been set up mainly for the pleasure of the boarders, and the Christmas dinner was prepared only for their sake. George, living at his uncle’s house, would have afternoon dinner with his mother, sisters and Josephine’s parents; then spend the evening with Simeon’s family. Ellen and Flora would eat the boarders’ meal, only in the kitchen.
Sunlight slanted through the frosted parlour windows, broken and made lively by crystals. Flora hesitated. Do something nice. With whom?
“I could stay here,” Flora said. “We could…”
Josephine looked up, attempting a smile. “I’m all right, Flora. Take my skates, we have the same size feet. Or you could go to the hill with a sled. They’re hanging on the wall in the back shed. You could walk along the river. You could go into the shops.”
She put out a hand, as if to be shaken, but slid her fingers around Flora’s own and brought them to her cheek.
“There’s nothing you can do for me,” she whispered.
Flora untied her apron and dressed for the cold.
As she passed the barn with skates hung over her shoulder, she heard a tap on the window of Jasper Tuck’s workshop. She saw him, dim behind the frosted pane, beckoning; so she went into the barn, unslung the skates and sat on the edge of a chair. Warmth emanated from a small wood stove set on a slab of stone.
“Saved this for you. Don’t think there’s anyone else could do it.”
“Why not? You could.” A bit of cheek, in her words, to cover how he set her akilter.
“My fingers are too big. See.”
He had laid out miniscule windowpanes, a jar of paste and a fine brush on a table. She could not resist the little windows with their empty muntins. Like playing with the toys she had never had. Making something that had no plain use. He leaned over her, showing her how to set the panes. She felt his solidity, like a horse—a contained energy. He unscrewed the jar of paste, made sure she understood; then settled back at his own workbench.
Mr. Tuck was making a replica of the house across the street—gables, veranda with matchstick railings, tall downstairs windows. He was attaching its gingerbread trim with tiny tacks. He held his mouth in a tender grimace, almost feminine, as he rapped gently with his ball-peen hammer.
“Is it hard to go back to real carpentry?”
He sat back, adjusted his vision to take her in. “What do you mean?”
“During the week. When you got to use an ordinary hammer and ordinary-sized shingles.”
His jaw crept out and he looked out the window at snow unspooling from a high drift. His eyes hardened.
“I guess it would, yes. As you said. But I’m not working right now. At carpentry. I got no work. So I got to sell these, see.”
He seemed irritated, whether at her or something else she could not tell. She worked at the windows in silence, waiting for his mood to pass. She could be skating. She pictured the rink, the music, the laughter.
Flora dipped the brush into the paste, drew a bead along the wood. Another bead, and two more. She held her breath, set down the brush, gently picked up a square of glass and eased it down onto the glue. Tapped it with a fingertip, felt it settle into the paste. Done, perfect. She set another pane, and then another, until the grid of sticks, the pieces of glass became a window. A thing to enclose a house, to repel wind and rain, to keep its inhabitants safe. She sat back, astonished. She picked up the brush to begin another.
“You should make little people,” she ventured.
He had resumed his careful tapping. “You’re a funny one, you are. Little people.”
“Why not? Like a doll’s house?”
“This ain’t a doll’s house though, is it. This is a replica.”
“Sorry.”
“Aye, you should be. Sorry.”
Was this teasing, she thought, not liking his tone, or testing? Or something else, dangerous? She had never spent time with a man. Perhaps this is what they were like. The windows and dusty walls of the workshop shut away the brisk air she had been enjoying when she had started off down the lane. She wished she had not answered his beckon.
“What was it like, up north?”
“Up north where?”
“Here. In New Brunswick. You told Mrs. Galloway. Where you came from.”
He ran his finger over the tacks to make sure they were flush with the wood.
“Cold,” he said, after a pause. “It was brutal cold up there. Nothing much to do. So I came south to find work.”
A log settled in the stove.
“You’re a one with the questions today. What was it like over there? In England?”
“Cold,” she said, impulsively, trying to match his teasing tone, never having played such a game. “In the winter. Cold and damp. I was in a workhouse, you know.”
“Were you, now.” He stroked his cheeks, pulling down his eyelids so his eyes showed their meaty red, like Sailor in a melancholy mood.
She felt his gaze settle on her. Coals shifted in the wood stove. She determined to leave as soon as she had finished this one window.
“Got no people, then,” he said. The sentence hung, as Josephine’s words had, earlier. Do something nice…
She wiped the paste from the brush, abrupt. “I have to go.”
She gathered up her skates and let herself out of the barn. Ada had told her that men could sense when you had begun your bleeding. That they always knew when you had become a woman.
Two days before Christmas, Josephine brought a letter into the kitchen. She paused in the doorway.
Maud stirred a saucepan whose contents slapped and bubbled. Ellen stood at the table with her hands on her waist, observing Flora as she came from the stove carrying a small cast-iron skillet. The room was vaporous, cloud-like: steam rose from the boiling cranberries, rice cooled in a bowl. Flora poked a strand of hair into her bun, carefully poured melted butter over a beaten egg. Rice croquettes, Josephine thought. Cranberry sauce.
“Like this?” Flora asked. Josephine noticed how she glanced at Ellen, nervous. Ellen was a painstaking baker. She had her methods.
“Yes, and then you sprinkle in the sugar and the nutmeg.”
The room was at once kitchen, dining room, living room and study. Ellen’s chair by the window held a basket with indigo-blue and grey wool. Josephine’s armchair, in a corner, was flanked by a pie-crust table loaded with newspapers, books, a wooden writing box. She sank into her chair, working spectacles onto her nose.
“It’s from Lucy. Shall I read it aloud?”
“Mother, is she coming home for Christmas?”
“I hope so, Maudie. We shall see, I guess. Here’s what she says.”
December 21, 1888
Dear Mother,
Cousin Carrie invited me for Christmas dinner so I will go there. I get only one day off.
Josephine set down the letter. She was silent for a long time before sighing, resuming.
I’m sorry to miss all of you but at least I will be with family. Aunt A. and Uncle N. are coming.
Work is hard. I objected when our lunchtime was cut short. It is not a place for someone who talks back. My overseer for work discipline and production is nasty. He has already given me two fines which are taken from my wages. One was for inferior work which I could not see was fair at all. The other was for giving one of the doffers a snack from my apron pocket. There is a man who pinches me every morning when I go through the door. He waits for me. What should I do?
“Pinch him back,” Ellen said, savage. “The brute.”
“Tell the overseer?” Maud suggested.
“No.” Flora overturned a spoonful of sugar. “That don’t…that doesn’t work. They get worse if you snitch.”
We have to eat our dinner in the same room we work. There are chairs in the corner. That is when we can use the convenience which the men use as well so it is very sticky and smelly. When I am not too tired I go to the Free Public Library reading room in the evenings. That is where I am now. It is quiet and my roommate is not here to stare or chatter at me and drive me to want to slap her face. There is a section about law and I am reading a book called “Blackstone’s Commentaries.” It is the history of English common law and it is very interesting. Did you know about “the doctrine of marital unity”? It sets out that at marriage the woman becomes absorbed by the man and is nobody aside from him. It makes me see why we women are treated like brainless non-persons and why it is so important that we have the right to vote. Cousin Carrie’s meetings are SO exciting. Oh how I wish you could come to them one day with Maud and Flora. We are working on many fronts, as we say. One of us writes to the WCTU…
“Women’s Christian Temperance Union,” Maud murmured to Ellen, who had raised her eyebrows.
…who as you know are endorsing our petition calling for full suffrage. We keep each other up to date on our efforts. Also we are going to have a woman come to speak who is an authority on child labour laws and the needs of women factory workers. Ha ha I could do that. There is no fire escape from this building, for one.
How are all your pampered boarders? Is George coming home from school for Christmas? I suppose he will stay with Uncle Charles and Aunt Lavinia, the spoiled thing.
Did you put up a tree in the parlour? I don’t know when I will be home again but likely when Carrie starts going around to give talks about suffrage and labour. I miss you, Mother, and I hope you are well.
Love,
Your daughter,
Lucy
No one spoke. Maud concentrated on her stirring. Josephine opened her writing box, slipped the letter inside and closed the lid. She felt a prick of jealousy, picturing Lucy’s animated face at Carrie’s Christmas table, seeing Carrie take hold of her headstrong daughter, convincing her that to remain unmarried was a political act. She could not bear the thought that Lucy would forego the love she herself had had with Simeon, or that Maud, over whom Lucy had great influence, might do the same.
Flora’s spoon batted the side of the bowl, a rhythmic knock as she mixed the butter and egg.
Josephine rose and left the room with apparent purpose; then stood in the hallway, dreading her cold bedroom, the line of mourning clothes hanging as still from their hooks as if they dressed a row of corpses. She remembered her delight in Harland’s window display. She could visit again, to see if he had added anything new.
She pulled on her wool coat, wrapped a scarf around her neck and let herself out the back door. She headed down the hill, following a pathway in the snow beneath the branches of naked elms.
They had skated together as children, before Simeon came to town. Hand in hand, the band playing. Recently, in a schoolbook she had gotten out for Flora, she’d found the note he’d written to her when they were children. Dear Josephine, will you mary me?
I am drowning, Josephine thought. Drowning people reach up for something to grasp. Why will I tell him I have come?
She remembered that he had started a petition for an almshouse. She would ask if she could help. She would go into the store and offer to circulate Harland’s petition.
Lucy’s letter had made her feel old and relegated to another era, but now her steps quickened. The smell of wood smoke was on the air, and her heart lifted at the thought of Christmas cookies. She would ask Ellen to make some, after all.
“He’s to be hanged,” Ellen said, after Josephine left the house. “Oh, I wish Mr. Dougan was here.”
Flora mixed egg, sugar and cinnamon with the rice. She plucked handfuls of the sticky mixture from the bowl with floury hands, making croquettes to store in the ice box for Christmas day.
Maud was stirring the cranberry sauce, watching it thicken. “Who?” she said. “Who is to be hanged?”
“That axe murderer, Mr. Crowley. He’s to be hanged tomorrow.”
Alongside her Irish poems, Ellen posted with hatpins the most salacious of the newspaper articles about the trial. She unpinned one and waved it at them, then read it aloud; triumphantly, Flora thought.
“Unless the hand of Providence intervenes between John Crowley and the gallows, he will undergo sentence of death tomorrow, for one of the most heinous crimes on record in New Brunswick. By the judge’s request, the hanging will not be made public. Well, now, we can all sleep safe in our beds.”
Maud stared at her. “That’s horrible.”
“Don’t you be feeling sorry for the man,” Ellen snapped. “Remember what he did. This is the coroner’s testimony: I lifted the woman’s skirts up to examine her. I saw that there were bruises on the inside of both thighs and scratches on the right groin. The bruises appeared to be from a man’s hand and the scratches from a man’s fingernails. Then he goes on about the blows of the axe. The whole forehead was broken in.”
She pressed the paper back on the wall, pushing the hatpin deeper than necessary, as if she wished a permanent testimony.
“Good riddance to him,” Ellen whispered.