SIXTEEN
Sisters
FLORA TRAILED HER FINGERTIPS across the woven tablecloth. The regularity of its criss-cross pattern calmed her. She sat with a cup of tea at the kitchen table of the Anglican parsonage. Pies with lattice crusts cooled on a cupboard shelf. The minister’s wife was snapping green beans into a bowl.
“Reverend Snelcroft, in Halifax, wrote to the Overseer of the Poor in Pleasant Valley, Mr. Fairweather,” Flora explained. “He said my sister was to be placed with Mr. Albert Mallory. The hostler at the inn knew a driver who would take me there. Mr. Perley Hayes. He had heard tell of the Mallorys. He drove me up there.”
She gestured, vaguely.
“But the Mallorys said…” her voice faltered. “They didn’t know any Enid Salford.”
A practised listener, the minister’s wife watched Flora keenly through steel-rimmed spectacles. She clucked with sympathy.
“Shame. What a disappointment for you.” Her voice was apologetic. “But I’m sure my husband never heard anything from Reverend Snelcroft.”
Flora opened her mouth to protest. Closed it. The minister’s wife reached forward and patted Flora’s wrist, distressed.
“I’m quite certain. My husband tells me everything. A minister’s wife, you see, has to know.”
Flora looked out the window, hiding her disappointment.
“I’m sorry, Flora. He would especially have told me if it was something to do with children.”
Swallows, like a row of pearls, made the clothesline sag.
She spent the rest of the day asking. At the docks. In the dry goods store. At the train station. At the livery stable, the shoemaker’s shop, the blacksmith’s, the milliner’s. People paused in their work, surprised. They looked at her with puzzlement, listened to her query, responded with sympathy. No one had heard of a young English girl named Enid Salford.
By the end of the day, she could no longer bear to tell the story.
At the inn, waiting for supper, Flora sought the breeze, choosing a table by an open window, but even so, beads of sweat prickled her scalp. She felt lost, bereft, as if a cherished picture had been torn from her hands and cast onto a fire.
A young woman pushed open the screen door. Dusty, scuffed boots, one set precisely in front of the other, warily stepping over the floorboards to the front desk. She spoke with the clerk, who took note of the washboard-wizened dress and missing buttons before nodding towards Flora. Flora witnessed the exchange, watched the woman slipping between the dining room tables, slumped like a folded napkin.
“You the one lookin’ for an English girl?”
Flora nodded. The young woman’s eyelids were swollen by blackfly bites.
“I cm’in town to see my brother. He tol’ me someone named Flora from this hotel came to the docks askin’ about an English girl.”
She paused, eyeing Flora. Flora squeezed her cloth napkin, focused on each word, like extracting gold from sand.
“I know where that girl is. She’s up to Black Creek. At the Mallorys’.”
“I went up there. But Mr. Mallory told me…”
“He’s a liar. Mr. Mallory. He’s bad. He’s real bad. My husband gots a distillery. Mallory buys from my husband. They drink. I heard him talking about that girl. He was some angry. Said he asked for a boy.”
Flora was seized with trembling.
“You’re sure.”
“Yuh. Sure.”
Flora took coins from her bag.
“Thanks,” she whispered, pressing coins into the woman’s hand. She felt the brush of fingers. The woman vanished, a ripple of motion, then stillness, like the disappearance of a fox.
Perley Hayes appeared at the door of his house.
“You been up there once, he told you she ain’t there. She ain’t there. You got no reason to go up there again.”
Flora stood straight. She lifted her chin and stared down into the man’s eyes.
“I think she’s there. I was told she is there.”
He drew the back of his hand over his nose, wiped his hand on his pants. He settled into himself, staring past Flora, over the harbour. “Askin’ for trouble and I don’t want to be no part of it.”
“I’m scared for her.”
“Just askin’ for trouble.”
“I’ll pay twice what I paid yesterday.”
He worried his hair with one hand.
“Could you be at the inn at 5:30 tomorrow morning?” She spoke calmly, as if he had already agreed.
His eyes touched hers. Reluctant.
“On your head if he gets riled up.”
“On my head, then.”
Just at sunrise, the hired man knocked over a hoe propped against the side of the parsonage barn. He picked it up and carried it inside.
Started, stepped back.
A body, under grain sacks. On the new hay. He clutched the hoe, tiptoed close. Female, neither child nor woman. Dirt-encrusted fingernails. A rash of fly bites and sores. Arms bloody with scratches. Flakes of skin on her lips, hair caught up in a knotted rag.
He jogged to the house and burst into the kitchen. The minister’s wife was spooning tea into a pot. Oatmeal bubbled on the wood stove.
“Miz Wallace, there’s a girl asleep in the barn.”
She, too, started, tea leaves spilling from the spoon.
“Is she anyone you know?”
“Never seen her before.”
The door from the back stairway cracked open. The minister appeared, crooked spectacles, half-awake. Seeing the hired man, he stepped down into the kitchen.
“Harold, Cullen tells me there’s a girl in our barn.”
“What do you mean, Cullen?” the minister asked, adjusting his spectacles.
“Sleeping. She’s some filthy. Skin and bones. Arms all scratched, like she was picking raspberries.”
“Oh, my heavens, Harold. The lost sister?”
“Most probably.”
“Cullen, rush right over to the Pictou Inn and get them to wake up that girl. Flora is her name. Flora. Bring that Flora back here straight away.”
Cullen hurried from the kitchen.
“Harold, I’m going out to the barn.”
She pushed the oatmeal to the side of the stove. She took molasses cookies from a crock, wrapped them in a cloth, hurried out the door and down the path.
The girl was sitting up. She froze as Mrs. Wallace came into the barn, pulling the sacking up over her shoulders.
Mrs. Wallace knelt beside her.
“Molasses cookies. I baked them yesterday.” She held one out to Enid. “I had a girl like you but she’s all grown up and has two children. My husband is the minister, you know, and he’s the nicest man. I have oatmeal making on the stove. Now you get onto your feet and we’ll go up to the house and I’ll make you some tea.”
A hand slipped from beneath the sacking, accepted the cookie.
“Thank you,” the girl whispered.
English?
“You know, dear, your sister is looking for you.”
“My…”
“Your sister. Her name is Flora? Is that right? Are you Enid?”
The sacking slipped from her shoulders. Collarbones, like a chicken carcass. Hay clung to her dress, made of flour bags.
“I seen her,” the girl said. Her voice was hoarse, as if it had not been used for a long time. “She ain’t my sister.”
Mrs. Wallace pulled Enid to her feet, put an arm around her, led her to the house. Reverend Wallace, watching in the window, was ready with the blanket that Mrs. Wallace wore over her lap on winter nights.
Enid sat in the rocking chair. Mrs. Wallace eased a cup of tea into her hands. They set a spoon and a bowl of oatmeal sprinkled with fresh blackberries on the table next to her. Mrs. Wallace fussed at the sink, postponing her own breakfast. Mr. Wallace took a cup of tea to his study.
Cullen opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen.
“She isn’t there,” he said, glancing at Enid, who had taken the bowl of oatmeal into her lap and was hungrily eating. “Flora. She and Perley are on their way to the Mallorys.”
Enid set down the oatmeal and stood. The blanket fell from her shoulders. “You got to stop her.”
“Why, Enid?”
“Fred…they’ll think I told. He’ll hurt her.”
She was seized with a fit of trembling.
“I run from him. I run.”
Perley Hayes stopped the horse just before the curve in the road, where it led out of the trees and into the clearing.
“I got to water the horse. There’s a stream here. You kin walk. It’s just around the corner and down.”
Flora felt a beat of fear.
“You don’t want him to see you.”
“Horse needs water, is all.”
He climbed down from the wagon, not meeting her eyes. She hesitated, wondering if her instinct was a product of desire or the adjunct of disappointment, a foolishness she would regret.
Flora left the thought unfinished, unheeded, and slipped down onto the road. The sun had risen—spruce needles caused the light to quiver.
“I shouldn’t be long,” she said. “And if I am, you going to come looking for me?”
He was unbuckling the harness, seemed not to hear.
The homestead lay below, an opening in the trees surrounded by a split-rail fence. She heard the broken crow of a young rooster; smelled the smoke that spiralled from the chimney. Dampness rose from the soil as she walked down the hill. Her heart quickened. He was only like Mr. Tuck, she reasoned. Coarse, rough. He was only like the men in the workhouse. Or the hired hands on the farm where she had lived with the Quigleys. Perhaps he had been abandoned as she had been herself. And there was a woman. She had seen her, peering over the man’s shoulder; surely she would be a softening influence should Mr. Mallory be angry. The rooster crowed again. Close, now, she could make out the waking farm’s details—a cow belly-deep in weeds, disconsolate with bursting udder; the rooster on the fence stretching his neck. She wondered if Enid might be in the barn, or a shed. She felt sudden misgiving. Perhaps there was nothing sinister about this. Perhaps they only wanted to keep her for the help she gave them. Or perhaps Enid herself was afraid to leave this place. Perhaps she did not want to return to the world where a sister could abandon her; where a child could be bundled onto a ship and shipped across an ocean. Perhaps she thought that whatever came next might be worse than this desolate, secluded farm.
Flora stepped around sun-glazed hollows in the path where hens made dust baths. She approached the house warily, mindful of the dog. It occurred to her that if a young woman should emerge and be presented to her as not being Enid, she would have no way of knowing whether or not this was the truth.
Fourteen years old, she thought. Fourteen.
The door of the house swung open. Mr. Mallory stood in the doorframe, unbuttoning his flies. She froze as he began to fumble with his underdrawers. He sighed, closed his eyes. A golden stream, steaming. She heard a hollow knocking sound, as if something within the house had fallen over.
He called back over his shoulder. “I ain’t done with you.”
He opened his eyes as he tucked himself back into his trousers, and his gaze felt on Flora. He reeled backwards, threw up an arm.
“What the bejesus you doing here?”
His words were slurred. His eyes widened, squinted.
“Fuckin’ women.”
Wee-min, Flora heard. Fuckin’ weemin.
He came towards her, one long step caught up by a sideways lurch. He stopped, clasped his face in one hand as if the light were an anguish. He pointed back up the hill.
“By Jesus, you get off my place.”
“Who is it? Who you talking to?” A woman’s voice.
“Shut up.”
Mrs. Mallory’s face appeared in the window, distorted by the glass, cheeks smashed to purple, open bleeding wounds around her eyes. She gripped her mouth with bloody fingers.
Mr. Mallory took another reeling step. “Get off out of here.”
Flora backed away.
“Mr. Mallory, I was told that Enid Salford was here. I need to see her.”
Whiskey, sour breath. Shirt half-unbuttoned. Black hairs on his chest. A streak of blood on his cheek.
“Perley Hayes bring you? Cunt bastard. I’ll see to…”
The dog came up from the barn, a silent energy, like wind. Flora screamed, flailed her arms, felt teeth on her forearm. She tore from the dog’s grip, ran towards the house. The woman pulled the door wide. Flora tripped, fell over the threshold. The woman snatched a cloth from the stove bar, thrust it at Flora. Mr. Mallory followed Flora into the house, slammed the door behind him, rammed a bolt over the bar latch. Flora huddled on the floor, pressing the dishcloth to her wound. The dog hurled itself against the door.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Silence. The click of the dog’s nails.
Mr. Mallory sat at the table. He picked up a stoneware jug and tipped it to his mouth.
“All night,” the woman hissed at Flora. Accusing. “This been goin’ on all night.”
She huddled against the wall, hands to bleeding mouth. Smashed crockery. A broken chair, its rush seat ripped loose. A bowl of stew on the floor, its contents congealing on the rug.
Flora’s mind became a ray of light, searching. The door, locked. Could she pull the bolt back? The dog, waiting. Another door, leading into a hall.
Drinking all night.
“What to do with her,” he muttered to himself. “What in the hell am I going to do with her. Fuckin’ women.” He roared at his wife. “You let the girl out of your sight. She’s gone and told. They sent this…this…”
Pointing at Flora.
“No one sent me,” she said.
“No one sent me.” He tipped the jug back until she could see the matted underside of his beard.
“Alright, then,” he whispered. “Two women I got to dispose of. How to…though…uhh. Dispose…”
He sat forward, abruptly, elbows on knees, head in hands. He shook his head, muttering.
“…deal with Hayes…horse…whore bitch…”
The woman and Flora looked at one another. The woman’s eyes went to the poker, hanging on the back of the stove. Flora’s eyes. She signalled to the woman with the slightest lift of a forefinger. Wait.
“Mr. Mallory?”
“How the fuck you know my name? Where you from, anyway. Never seen you around…”
“I’m not from here. I don’t know anything about you, except that…”
She took a deep breath.
“…that you have my sister.”
Stillness, suddenly. Mr. and Mrs. Mallory, shocked into complicity.
“What sister?” he said.
“Enid Salford is my sister.”
“You ain’t one of them people who’s in charge of them English kids?”
“No. I’m Enid Salford’s sister, and I’ve been looking for her for a very long time. I was told she was here at your farm.”
“Well, then, you got her to blame.” He tipped forward until his feet were beneath his torso; rocked himself up and staggered over to his wife. Bracing himself with one hand against the wall, he kicked her with each word. “She-let-that-damn-girl…” Harder. “Out-of-her-sight. Her-ignorant-slut-fault.”
Flora scrambled to her feet. She seized the back of his shirt.
“Stop that. You’ll kill her.”
He turned and gripped Flora by the shoulders. She tore from his grasp, knocked the jug from the table. It broke into three large pieces. She picked up a piece, backed away, holding it towards his face. He punched her in the stomach. Her skirt tripped her as she doubled over, turning to run, the bolt beneath her fingers, trying to shove it back, screamed as she felt a stab in her shoulder, the point raking down through the fabric of her sleeve. Bloody shard in his hand.
Men’s voices, horses.
She screamed. Mrs. Mallory screamed.
“Help! Help us!”
Mr. Mallory thrust her aside. She knelt, clutching her shoulder. The door wrenched open, his boots on the dirt, a stagger, shouting, running, the shard in his hand like a spear.
“Off my property! You got no—”
Air on her face, the smell of summer.
Mrs. Mallory on her side, furled, like a caterpillar. Mr. Mallory, stumbling across the clearing, waving his arms as if the men were crows and could be frightened away. Two men flinging themselves willy-nilly from their horses, running towards him.
Perley Hayes, then.
Horse and wagon coming around the bend.