TWELVE
Soft as Flannel
March 10, 1889
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Dear Mr. Fairweather,
I am in receipt of your letter concerning one of Miss Maria Rye’s girls. I did indeed receive three girls into my home and assisted with their placement with farmers or families that had requested them. I am happy to report that one of them was Enid Salford. She was placed with a farmer on the Northumberland Shore, in a place called Black Creek. I delivered her to the train but did not accompany her to her final destination. I trust that she was received as arranged by mail with a Mr. Albert Mallory. I have not heard from Enid although I have sent several letters, as I promised Miss Rye I would. It is too great a distance for me to travel in order to make an inspection, and I am not myself a young person nor am I in good health. I would be grateful if you would undertake this yourself if possible, although I see that you are in New Brunswick and realize that it will be a considerable journey. There is no financial compensation available, of course. We do these things out of the goodness of our hearts to raise these English children from the gutters in which they were found. I am sure you understand and feel the same.
I am,
Yours truly,
Reverend Charles Snelcroft
Harland stood by the window, holding the reverend’s letter to the light. Permelia, in the kitchen, was engaged in a shouting match with the cook.
“Let me go, then. I’ll go back to me own people.”
There had been a burned crust on the apple pie. He was certain that Permelia raised her voice for his benefit, since the stove was, in fact, in need of replacement. She had brought him an advertisement for a nickel- plated range, pointing out the capacity of its water reservoir, the size of its oven, its nickelled towel rod and teapot stand, its handsome skirting.
Against the sky, the flag’s snap or sag revealed the wind. Just now, it hung limp, as if spent.
Variation within a pattern, he thought, looking at his notebooks, yearning to sit at them for an entire day, comparing temperatures, humidity, pressures and wind speeds for all his recorded Marches. He would comfort himself with the earth’s renewal, how its season of torment and persecution faded in fits and starts, how it did not cease its stubborn efforts.
He would take the letter with him to the store; from the quiet of his office, he would write to Josephine. Please tell Flora…He imagined travelling to Nova Scotia with Josephine and Flora. Dismissed the idea, as if should it linger in his mind Permelia would prise it out like a spider in a cupboard.
Sailor lay at Josephine’s feet, snuffling for fleas. The piano had been shifted to provide a bulwark, giving her privacy in the turret room, although on this Friday morning the house was empty save for Ellen, in the kitchen, and Flora, who sat facing her. Pots of geraniums—coral pink, red, white—bloomed in the deep windowsills.
“You know, Flora, I can’t help but think that it is bad for us to wear these corsets,” Josephine said. She sighed and then coughed. Sailor looked up, sharply, and she dropped a hand to stroke his head. “They make actual dents in my flesh. And I can’t breathe, you know. I really can’t. I’ve read that the organs are displaced and that the muscles of our backs become flaccid.”
Flora, sitting on a satin-cushioned chair, felt incomplete without handwork and was unaccountably nervous, not knowing why she had been summoned and sensing, in Josephine, some unwarranted mood. Josephine would never invite Ellen to visit her in the parlour—like a friend, come for a visit.
“Carrie doesn’t wear one,” Flora murmured, embarrassed by the subject yet emboldened by the currency that intimacy offered. “She told me so. She said it is a thing that men want us to do so that we can be beautiful objects, like a horse or a fancy house.”
“She might be right,” Josephine said, pulling back her shoulders.
They sat listening to the patter of rain on the window. Flora gazed up at the trees, indistinct against the sky, like charcoal sketches. The smell of smoke from the kitchen stove sharpened the room’s bookish odours.
“This room is so special,” Josephine said. Sailor raised an eyebrow.
“Why is it special?” Flora asked. She folded her hands; unclasped them, pressed palm to palm; slid her fingers into a fist.
“Simeon asked me what I wanted in a house. Tell me one thing, he said. One thing I had always dreamed of. Would it be a widow’s walk, he asked? So I could stand in all weathers and watch for his return? Would it be a gazebo in the garden? Or a library of my own? I said I would like a place of windows, round, with cushioned seats and stained glass and deep sills for ferns and flowers. So that I could have summer in winter. We sketched it together, drawing after drawing, until we created a room that both of us loved. He added the pointed roof, like a dwarf’s cap from a fairy tale. I designed the stained glass. Calla lilies.”
She leaned forward to trace one with a fingertip.
“I couldn’t sell this house—how…how could I?”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“You know, Flora, I thought that when I arrived on Ocracoke Island I would find that there had been a misidentification. That they’d given me some other man’s possessions. I have a dream that comes night after night. A man appears at the far end of a beach, so far away that he is but a black speck, and he walks towards me, and suddenly I see that it is Simeon. He begins to run and I, too, run. The sand drags at my feet, and I stumble, panting, calling his name, holding my arms out. For months, I have dreamed this same dream.”
“I have a dream just like that,” Flora said. “I dream that I see Enid on a road. At first, I can’t tell if it’s her or not. Then I begin to run. I always wake up too soon.”
Josephine lifted her finger from the stained glass, slightly bewildered, and Flora realized that she had awakened to the fact that she spoke not to a friend of her own status, but with a workhouse girl, who, once, might have been called a guttersnipe. She turned to the table and lifted a letter, worked spectacles onto her nose.
“Mr. Fairweather has found someone who knows where Enid was placed.”
Flora’s hands flew up; she slid to the edge of her chair.
“Enid? Enid, my sister Enid?”
Josephine put the letter down, pulled off her spectacles. “Oh, Flora. I’m so sorry. I read it just like an ordinary thing, didn’t I? She was placed with…let me see…a Mr. Mallory. Mr. Albert Mallory, on a farm in Black Creek. On the Northumberland Shore of Nova Scotia.”
Sailor opened his mouth in a sudden pant. He looked back and forth between them, his eyes anxious.
Flora flushed with a complexity of feelings she could not control or disentangle, stunned that Josephine could have held this news inside of her while speaking of stained glass and corsets. She could not speak.
Sailor scrambled to a sitting position but did not wag his tail. Josephine looked at Flora, waiting for her to react, and when she continued to stare, silent, reached down and stroked the dog.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s extraordinary, but it affirms that that is where she is. We can look on a map. You can try sending her a letter, although…” She picked up the letter again. “…this Reverend Snelcroft says he sent letters and didn’t hear back.”
“Oh, but Enid would have written.” Flora felt a visceral power—in her jaw, in her voice—as she spoke in defence of a sister. A family member. Here, in Canada. She felt taller, her eyes saw more clearly. “She’s not well lettered but she would have written back. I know she would’ve. Maybe she’s not…maybe there’s been a mistake. Maybe it’s not her but some other girl.”
“No, no. Don’t worry. He says right here, see?” She handed Flora the letter, pointing at the sentence.
I am happy to report that one of them was Enid Salford.
Flora went back to the beginning and read to the end…raise these English children from the gutters in which they were found…
She stared at the letter. The words were true, she was now convinced; but she felt a great mistrust of the people who had been put in charge of her little sister and wondered at the reasons for her silence.
“Why hasn’t she written? It must be the people she is with won’t let her. Or don’t mail her letters. Like what happened to me. Or don’t want her to be found.”
Her voice raised. Hard. Wild.
Josephine took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. She contemplated the stained glass, chin in hand.
“Mr. Fairweather said he would try to send for Enid.”
“You can’t send for someone you don’t hear from. This Mr. Mallory doesn’t even write back. We can’t just…just…send letters.”
Josephine turned on her chair. Flora had slid to the edge of her chair, holding the letter with both hands. She stared at Josephine, furious. Accusing.
“Someone needs to go,” Flora said. “Someone needs to go to Nova Scotia. Find her and bring her back.”
“We will write…”
“No. No!”
“Flora, I—”
“It’s not enough. She could be in danger.” Her voice trembled, broke.
Sailor scrambled to his feet and nosed Flora’s skirt. Josephine, too, laid a hand on Flora’s skirt. Patted her knee.
“I will talk to Mr. Fairweather again, Flora. I’ll tell him that someone should go over there.”
Flora stroked the dog’s silky black hair. Through tears, she saw Sailor’s eyes soften, relax.
She could not speak.
“Maybe Mr. Fairweather himself will go,” Josephine said. “I will ask him, Flora. I promise you. I will ask him to go fetch her back.”
On the following afternoon, Jasper Tuck took Flora into his confidence.
“I have a plan.”
Flora cut a piece of carpet into small squares, leaning forward in a wicker chair, a basket of samples at her side. Her scissors chewed through the carpet with a final effort. March wind rattled the window in its frame, rampaged through the treetops with a sound like surf. Last summer, she and Maud had sat on these same wicker chairs, set around a wicker table on the veranda—drinking lemonade, playing checkers—and heard a frantic peeping. They climbed onto the roof and inched on their bellies to peer into a swallows’ nest. The babies clustered like a handful of finely feathered bones, beaks gaping. She would show all these things to Enid. She would show her a clutch of chicks, in the henhouse. They would stand in the summer sunshine. Enid would hold a bucket, scattering corn. Her hair—dark, now, or blonde? Short or long enough to braid?
“You figure in it,” he added. He lifted a compass, punched it into a sheet of paper with a crispy pop. He swung the pencil, little finger lifted.
He’s a strange one.
She set the small square on her knee, smoothed it. Her job, now, was to stitch over the cut edge and attach a knotted border.
“I’m going to make that house down the street. Hilltop, I hear tell it’s called.”
Of course, Flora thought, with a sudden thrill. Pleasant Valley’s most elaborate house. Where the MacVey sisters lived, purportedly holding seances and musical evenings, hosting visiting dignitaries. She always paused to gaze at the terraced lawns and the rose gardens.
“First…”
He did not finish the sentence, sliding his pencil along a protractor.
“First, we need to talk about that money.”
“What money?”
“Don’t be smart with me. You know what money.”
“I don’t know what you’re taking about.” A flush started in her neck, creeping upwards in revelatory petals.
He exploded from his chair. He seized her arms, half lifting her from her seat, squeezing, his breath sour in her face.
She dropped the scissors, the little carpet. “Let me g—”
“You shut your mouth. I heard you on the other side there. Watching me. Now you listen to me. I been thinking what to do about you. That’s my life savings and it’s my business and nobody else’s. I don’t want one word spoken about my money. Not one word. If you say one word about that money to any of them,” he nodded at the house, “I will know.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll see it in their eyes just like I seen it in yours. People look different at a man with money.”
“I won’t say anything. Why would I? Let me go.”
He released her arms. She fell back in the chair.
“You promise?”
She rubbed her arms. “Promise.”
“Say ‘I promise I won’t say anything about your money.’ ”
“I promise I won’t say anything about your money.” She stared at him, suddenly emboldened by curiosity. “Mr. Tuck, it’s only money. Why do I care? Most men have money, I suppose. I don’t know why you don’t put it in the bank, though. What if there was a fire?”
He kicked his chair back to its place in front of the table. He sat, staring coldly at the drawing he had just made. He placed his palm on the paper, gathered it by slow increments with the tips of his fingers, knuckles whitening as he worked it into a ball. He slid a fresh sheet of paper towards himself. She felt the prickling of sweat beneath her arms.
“I got to go,” she said, winding the excess thread back onto the spool. “I got to clean the upstairs.”
“My plan,” he said, beginning again with the compass, “is for you to go to Hilltop. Talk to them ladies. In your posh accent.”
“It’s not posh.”
“They will not look at the likes of me coming up their path, but if we dress you up in some fancy clothes, they’ll open the door to you.”
“And then what?”
“Then you tell them all about the houses I make and why they should buy my miniature of Hilltop. You’ll have samples of them little carpets, curtains, a bed, say, complete with quilt and pillows. All the fixings. Everything but the people. I suppose I could make people if they wanted. Like you suggested.”
“I don’t have time. I got too much spring cleaning. I’m fixing on getting another cow. There’s the garden. And could be I go to Nova Scotia.”
“Yuh. Your sister. You and Enid going to want to set up housekeeping.”
He moved his chair back, reached down and pulled open the drawer. She averted her eyes. It seemed an intimacy, his savings. The flush had not entirely subsided from her face.
“Look up, Missy Flora.”
He was holding a handful of bills. He leaned forward and laid them on her table.
“Count them. That’s a start. Once we start selling houses there will be lots more. I’ll be employing other girls. To sew all them little things. Your sister, I’ll wager she’s a hand with the needle. Once we get things going, I’ll set up a big workshop. Not here. Down in the town. There’s your job for life. You’ll go to them fancy houses and show off the merchandise. You’ll manage the girls; I’ll manage my men.”
She touched the money with one finger.
“Count it,” he said. “It’s yours if you say ‘Yes, Mr. Tuck, I’ll go up to them ladies at Hilltop.’ ”
The bills were soft as flannel, as if they had been held, caressed, smoothed, passed from hand to hand. Their creases were like the wrinkles in weathered skin.
“I’ll have to tell Mrs. Galloway that I’m getting paid for my work on your houses. Otherwise she won’t like me spending so much time out here.”
“You can tell her. Just don’t say how much.”
She should ask him what he would pay her beyond the bribe, but did not, stunned by more money than she had ever seen before, a wild prelude to her changing fortune. She murmured, yes, yes, she would do it, and looked up, glimpsing how his small, square teeth had been revealed but quickly covered, his face assuming its usual cold watchfulness.
Maud sat on a chair in the hall, reading a letter. Flora, smelling of wood shavings, hair blown and cheeks reddened, sat beside her, unlacing her boots. The ticking of the parlour clock was like a shore against which the moan and whistle of the wind dashed, was rebuffed.
“George,” Maud said, violently clutching the letter to her breast and closing her eyes. “Oh!”
“What?” Flora said. Maud amused her sometimes. She was so often outraged on behalf of someone else, often disproportionately.
Maud’s voice dropped to a loud whisper. “He thinks he’s looking out for Mother. Truly, Flora. It makes me wonder if he can see himself. He is treating Mother like a child.”
Flora wrenched off the boot. It was too small and she massaged her toes. “How?”
“He is still trying to get Lucy and me to see that as soon as we turn twenty-one we should sell the house.”
“Well. That’s a long way away.”
“Yes, but you see, he wants me to start dropping hints. Make Mother see that she would be better off in a smaller house. Even get her to consider remarrying. He says to me in this letter that he is strictly…wait, I will read it to you. Believe me, Maud, when I say that I look at this in a strictly utilitarian fashion. We would incur a fair amount of money from the sale of the house. If Mother relinquished her dower interest, she would be given her share. We would all be able to get ahead with our lives. Then he even describes the little house Mother could buy. Apparently, he has spotted just the place. On Queen Street.”
Flora noticed the banging of pot lids in the kitchen. She was late, and Ellen was annoyed. Still, she sat with her foot in her lap, her skirt hitched. Indecorous, but it was only two girls, in the cold hall, on a March afternoon.
“We have the power to force the sale, George says. You know, Flora, I truly believe he is thinking only of himself, even though he pretends to be thinking of Lucy and me and of Mother. I believe he’s begun to think of this house as his. I believe he’s begun to think of himself as head of the family.”
Flora said nothing. Josephine, living in a small house. With no need of servants. Pictured herself and Enid, standing on a railroad platform, heading for a destination she could not imagine.
“I think of this house as Mother and Father’s house,” Maud continued, not noticing Flora’s sudden stillness. “The house they built with dreams of a long, happy life. Even after we children were grown and gone, they saw themselves living here together.”
Flora pictured her own parents. The wretched straw-thatched cottage. Yet they had made dolls for their little girls. They may have bolstered one another’s courage with the same kind of dream.
She put her hand on Maud’s, knew not to speak.
“I won’t do it,” Maud whispered. She stuffed the letter back into the envelope without properly folding it. “I will resist his idiotic plan. Lucy and I will stand up to him.”
The Intercolonial Hotel rose, three storeys high, against the blue sky. Flora, gazing up, wondered who might be inhabiting its rooms. She stood in a crowd of women, next to Josephine and Carrie.
Carrie had given a speech to the WCTU in Permelia’s parlour, on the subject of the suffrage petition. Afterwards, the women had felt the need to mount a protest. Impulsively, they had swept down Main Street, their heels clicking on the wooden sidewalk—twenty women carrying parasols, white ribbons pinned to white dresses, bright under the early spring sky; their reflections flickered in the window of McAllister’s Dry Goods, crossed its display of chinaware—berry sets, dessert bowls. They flickered, too, across the grocery store window, making a watery, layered painting: hatted, veiled women overlying rounds of cheese, a display of raisins and nuts, strings of sausages, brooms with green and blue handles.
As they had crossed the railway tracks, nearing the hotel, Flora had been pricked by memory of her arrival in Pleasant Valley. The track ran due west, merging to a single, silver glint; picking up her feet to step over the steel rails, she felt the culpability of not having told Josephine that Mr. Tuck had offered to pay her for her work, nor that he wished her to visit the sisters at Hilltop. She polished the intention to tell, like something fragile that must be perfect when eventually offered. She prepared her words, trying to see the situation from all angles. She needed to save money, especially now that Enid had been found. She would need real work once she and Enid set up housekeeping. Jasper Tuck’s little houses were exquisite and she was not ashamed to endorse them. Yet she sensed that she was taking a backwards step, one which was dangerous and predicated on fear; and like so much else in her life, a thing about which she had no choice.
The talk increased as they gathered in front of the Sample Room, a small pub attached to the hotel with one large window whitened by drawn curtains, like a blind eye. Around Flora, excited voices gained strength.
“…things that Premier Blair says about us, I become angrier…”
“They think we don’t want to vote.”
“…said no privilege has ever been denied us.”
“It shouldn’t be a privilege. It’s our right.”
Flora noticed that Josephine was listening, intently, turning to gaze at whichever woman was shouting the loudest.
Two men wearing suspenders, coats slung over their arms, approached the pub, intending to go in. They stopped, staring at the women, muttered to one another. They continued on down the street, glancing back.
Mrs. Humbolt, the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union local branch, made her way to the front of the crowd.
“Christ’s kingdom is based on the principles of human equality and brotherhood,” she called out to the women. “Human equality means the equality of men and women. Since men appoint us as the repositories of religious and moral virtue, we must use our influence to perfect society. Now, we know that it is women and children who suffer from the evils of drink. We seek a modest and pure world. As the Greek writer Xenophon said, moderation in all…”
The upstairs window opened. A man thrust his head out.
“Ladies, I am going to ask you to leave my premises. You are keeping the gentlemen from my door.”
A chorus of responses rose.
“…send them home to us drunk…”
“…our sidewalk as much as…”
“…things healthful; total abstinence from all things…”
Mrs. Humbolt finished her speech and the women bent their heads in silent prayer. Some held prayer books. Pages rippled in the breeze. Approaching men veered, crossed the street, gathered to stare.
“Now,” Carrie remarked, once the bowed heads raised, “we will take the suffrage petition from door to door.”
A bucket, out the window over their heads. Icy water unfurled, a fringed wave, billowing, widening, the spume separating into silver bullets. Outraged screams. Another bucket followed, another deluge.
“And don’t come back!”
Flora received the full contents on top of her head, water running down her neck, soaking her cape as she ran forward to salvage a prayer book, lying upside down on the wooden walk.