SEVEN

May 1914

Many of the Walhachin men were taking part in training exercises as part of their involvement in C Squadron of the 31st British Columbia Horse. George would saddle his gelding, Titan, and Gus took Flight, his lovely chestnut mare, though Agate would be a more reliable mount, Flora thought. Both men sat tall and steady among the others in the village square, ready to head out in formation to one of the fallow fields where they would wheel and turn in the dust. A platoon of small boys, armed with lengths of stick held like bayonets, followed them on foot. Some of the men had been training for several years now, going to Vernon or Kamloops to join the other squadrons, coming home with stories of mud, bivouacs, and saddle sores. And dust! In Kamloops the training camp was located near the racecourse, rumoured to be the dustiest place in the entire Dry Belt. Hay rakes had to be employed to comb articles out of the deep drifts at the conclusion of the camp. A few men had been members of hrh Duke of Connaught’s cavalry escort when he’d come to Vancouver in September 1912, and the Governor General had sent an official document professing his great satisfaction with their performance. Rumours of war were circulating throughout the Empire; C Squadron was determined to be ready.

An invitation came for Flora to spend a few days on the McIntyre Ranch in the Upper Hat Creek Valley. She’d met Jane McIntyre at a social in Ashcroft, and the two had become friends, sending letters and little mementos through the mail. Like Flora, Jane loved needlework and often described a new project, many of them inspired by the wildflowers of the valley where she lived. She was clearly enamoured of her home there; when the invitation arrived, Flora was excited at the prospect of a few days away. A vehicle from the ranch would be coming to Ashcroft for supplies, and if Flora could arrange to be there on the Wednesday, then she could travel up the Oregon Jack Creek Road with the ranch foreman. She took the train to Ashcroft and found a laconic Pete Richardson waiting for her in front of the harness-maker’s shop, where various items were being left for mending. Pete hoisted Flora’s valise into the back of the truck, along with a saddle, two sacks of flour, a small chest of tea, and various other parcels and boxes.

“I’d like to get us going, Miss,” Pete said in his quiet voice. “It’s a long piece of road and I want to drive it in the daylight. I always allow time for a flat tire or breakdown—that road, she’s a rough one. Mrs. McIntyre asked me to make sure you used the pillows she sent.”

He indicated a little stack of cushions on the seat where Flora would ride. She climbed into the truck and arranged the pillows at her back and bottom. She tied her straw hat firmly under her chin, and they were off.

Flora was surprised at how the climate changed as they proceeded up the long road that rose dusty from the sagebrush flats and feedlots by the Wagon Road near the Ashcroft Manor, up into forest, then above the valley formed by Oregon Jack Creek, cliffs on one side of the road and the green meadows below. Aspen shaded the road and the wildflowers were all later than down below, sticky geranium and penstemon and balsam-root brightening the verges of the narrow way. No wonder Jane’s embroidery was so lovely, thought Flora, with this wild beauty as inspiration. Richardson was a man of very few words but occasionally pointed out birds—a kestrel sitting on a fence post, killdeer flying up to take attention away from their nests. Down below the road, they saw a black bear seated among the grasses with two cubs at play nearby. The bears looked up at the sound of the truck but didn’t leave their patch of sunlight.

At various points along the journey, Pete would stop the vehicle and get out to figure out the best way to navigate a difficult section of road. In some places, rain had created washboarding; in other places, rocks had tumbled down a cliff-face to create obstacles that had to be pushed over to one side. Pete explained that he’d come down to Ashcroft from the other side of the valley, the lower side, collecting some equipment from an outfit at Cargyle, before driving down from Bonaparte. Every time he stopped, Flora got out of the truck and took deep breaths of the clean high air. How lovely this was. She was lately accustomed to take pleasure in the small beauties of the desert landscape—the brief yellow flowers on the prickly-pear cacti that surrounded Walhachin, and the pink bitterroot. She loved the dry heat and the low grey vistas or distant tawny hills, but this, oh this, was a kind of Eden, and but for Jane’s invitation, she would never have known it existed.

When they reached the ranch, Jane was waiting at the gate on a tall black horse with a spotted rump. She was holding the reins of a saddled mare, a dun. Quickly dismounting, she tied each horse to a post on either side of the gate. She embraced Flora and told Pete to go on ahead; Allan was waiting for him by the barn to help unload the truck.

“Flora, I’m so happy to see you! We could see the dust of the truck for ages, and I thought how nice it would be if you could ride up to the house with me. I can show you things as we go and no doubt you have had enough of that truck!”

She reached into her saddlebag for a flask of cold water from which Flora drank gratefully. The ranch lay on the eastern side of the valley, its pastures sloping down to the road. Soft wind rustled through the aspens and pines growing in small groves to provide shade for the horses grazing there. The two women mounted their horses, Flora wishing she’d worn a divided skirt but managing to tuck up her gabardine in such a way that she was able to find her stirrups without too much difficulty.

“That mare has a very soft mouth. Just use your reins against her neck and don’t pull her up too quickly,” Jane advised.

Opening a gate into the side pasture with her riding crop, Jane led them away from the driveway and after closing the gate again, they let their horses lope up the gradual hill to a place fringed with pines, offering a view of far-off snowy peaks that Jane said were on the coast. Everything was so clear and fine that Flora felt her throat constrict. A magpie swooped down from a tree, followed quickly by another.

“It’s as though we’re on the spine of the world,” Flora said quietly.

The ranch house was made of logs, covered in areas with clapboard; sunny yellow shutters framed some of the windows, and vines had been trained to grow up the southern side of the house to cool that exposure. White clematis tumbled in great frothy swaths from trellises while deep green Virginia creeper wound around the chimney. Jane’s husband, Allan, greeted them as they rode up to the house, then took their horses away to unsaddle and turn loose. Jane showed Flora to a small pretty room on the second floor, tucked into one gable. Faded chintz curtains hung in the window, a white-painted iron-framed bed was spread with a quilt pieced from tiny squares of summer dress materials, a wicker chair waited by the window for reading or dreaming, and two small watercolours of the valley decorated the whitewashed walls. Looking at them, Flora was surprised to see them signed with Jane’s name.

“I didn’t know you could paint,” she commented, looking closely at one of the pictures.

“My first winter here was a little lonely, I have to admit,” Jane told her. “I wondered if I’d made a mistake in marrying Allan and leaving the bustling hub of Ashcroft! But then I found paints that had been his mother’s and every day I saw those mountains and the pastures going on forever and far off, the coast mountains with their crowns of snow. And the birds—oh, Flora, the birds are extraordinary here. I’ve begun to keep a list, a life list I suppose it would be, and most days there’s something to add. Perhaps not a new bird but certainly a new behaviour, a nest, a moment that seems, well, momentous somehow! Of course we go down to see my parents in the town, and others too, and one day there will be children, God willing, so for now I have this luxury of space. My heart feels twice as wide as it did when I first came here with Allan after our wedding. I feel it expanding as we come over the rise on the Oregon Jack Creek Road.”

Then laughing at herself for such a long and excited reply to Flora’s simple comment, she left her friend to unpack, saying that they would have supper outdoors that evening.

When Flora woke in the flowery bed the next morning, it took a moment for her to remember where she was. From where she lay, from a gap between the curtains, she could see branches of aspen trembling in the early morning air; she could hear magpies and the creak of a floorboard as someone hesitated outside her bedroom door.

“Hello?” she called and was rewarded by the appearance of Jane carrying a tray holding a pot of tea and two cups.

“I thought I’d bring you tea in bed! And then I thought, But why don’t I take a cup for myself too and then we can talk! What would you like to do today, Flora? It’s going to be beautiful. I was up early to see Allan off—they’re checking on some cattle in the upper pasture—and saw the sun rise. Not a cloud in the sky!”

They settled in on Flora’s bed, sipping hot tea and chatting. Jane remarked on the lace edging the bodice of Flora’s nightdress, asking was it Flemish? It was not. It was Honiton, coming from that area of Devon made famous for its bobbin lace and where Flora’s mother went regularly to buy fine trimmings for her dressmaker to use on clothing for herself and her daughter. That led Jane to suggest a sewing activity they could work on under the shady trees a little later in the morning.

“I’ve just learned this method of making a camisole. I’ve been accumulating handkerchiefs, my mother sent me a box of them she found in Vancouver, so say you’ll do it with me, Flora, say you will? It’s no fun to sew these little gems alone.”

“How could I refuse?” smiled Flora.

After a breakfast of warm biscuits—“Our Chinese cook has a very light hand with pastry and biscuits. These are almost a scone, don’t you think? But I wish we could get him to realize that a piece of beef is not leather and doesn’t need to be boiled for hours”—and dark bitter marmalade that gave Flora a small pang of homesickness for its resemblance to the preserves of the Watermeadows kitchen, the two women gathered sewing things and went out to the yard.

“Here, let’s put this stuff on the table and then I’d like to show you around a little,” said Jane, indicating a wicker table and chairs under a spreading tree. They walked to the big barn where sunlight lit the long central walkway between stalls. Most of the horses were turned out, but one mare and her filly remained in a box stall, awaiting (Jane said) the ministrations of a ranch hand for a gash on the mare’s hock.

Another smaller barn was completely empty but for its hayloft; it was the winter home of the milk cow and a few goats. Sheds held equipment and tack. Everything was neat and orderly; a pair of perfectly matched cats sat on either side of the gate leading into the nearest pasture.

“Allan’s family has been here for two generations. Or three, now, with us. They came from Scotland, for the usual reasons, I suppose: a small piece of property and too many sons for it to be divided in any way that would allow for a decent living to be possible. Allan’s grandfather couldn’t believe that such large parcels were available here. The water rights were a little more difficult—Cargyles, for instance, were forced away by having their right to water reneged upon, and they went reluctantly because they had been first here and truly loved it—but really Grandfather McIntyre put so much labour into this ranch and hoped his sons and grandsons would carry on his name, continuing to care for this land.”

“Which Allan is certainly doing,” Flora exclaimed as she looked at the pastures stretching down to the dusty road, the supple poplars lining the driveway, the healthy garden. “And children, Jane? Are you planning to have children or is that too personal a question to ask? This place would be heaven for children . . .”

Jane said in a quiet voice that she’d had three miscarriages; although her doctor had told her there was no reason why she should not have a child, she wondered if it would ever happen.

“I think of those poor wee babies, a bit like ghosts now, and feel very uncertain about carrying a child to term. Allan is perhaps more optimistic than I am. He’s also very patient, which I don’t think most men would be. I said I was keeping a life list of birds and some days it seems that there is a death list also, of the lost babies. I wouldn’t tell Allan that. He would call it morbid. But each time I was so excited to be expecting a child and then . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and she touched her eyes with a hanky. Flora had told Jane some weeks previously about Grace and how she had felt sorrow at the brief time that baby had spent on earth. Mary’s sadness, the droop of her shoulders as she scrubbed clothes, dusted, sat alone in a chair with some mending: these spoke to a dimension of a woman’s life that Flora could only wonder at. She had not known that Jane had anticipated birth and then had her joy taken from her prematurely. She embraced her friend. And of course it was Allan’s loss too, for surely he had imagined himself a father, holding a child. A son who might ride these pastures as a father himself.

Flora had felt she had entered a rich and mysterious place with Gus, almost a secret world (and indeed no one knew of their meetings, certainly not of their lovemaking), in which she imagined the two of them were alone in the sensations they experienced on the boughs in Agrippa’s family’s cabin, under the apple trees, in coulees far from Walhachin. She wore both her anticipation and the memory of these encounters like a delicate garment, aware of its invisible weight upon her bare skin. She hadn’t thought that others shared this mysterious pleasure and that it might develop into something else. A marriage would contain both a past and a future as well as the day to day. And the quotidian might include the possibility of children, both their births and their untimely deaths.

“We will not talk about this anymore this morning, Flora,” said Jane, taking her friend’s arm and leading back to the arrangement of chairs under the shady tree. “We’ll make pretty underthings instead!”

Jane reached into her workbasket and took out a handful of light cotton. It moved a little in the breeze like thistledown.

“We take three of the handkerchiefs, fold them in half on the diagonal, and press them—I’ve done that already, as you can see—and then cut them along the fold. That gives us six triangles and we arrange them like this . . .”

Jane laid out her pieces of fine lawn like a puzzle on the tabletop, showing how the front and the back of the camisole would look.

“. . . and then we sew them together with bands of lace in-between the sections, and look! My mother has sent a lot of lace, though none of it as fine as your Honiton. I’ve got these tiny pearl buttons we can use for a little fastening, well, what do you think, under the arm or down the front seams? And of course lace for the shoulder straps. Do you like them, Flora?”

“So lovely, Jane! I would never have thought of using handkerchiefs this way. Oh, what a good idea.”

They began to sort through the assembled hankies, matching up plain ones with lengths of pretty lace. There was satin ribbon too, narrow widths in pale pink and blue, and Jane had the idea of threading it through some of the lace in order to create soft gathers to size the neck openings a little more precisely. They cut and then pieced their triangles together with the tiny stitches they’d learned at their mother’s knees, silver thimbles aiding the work. They held up the camisoles to see the progress of their work. At one point, Flora held her camisole to her chest and danced under the shady tree while Jane watched, smiling.

Then, out of the blue: “You are looking remarkably well, Flora. It’s almost as though you were in love . . .”

Flora felt heat rise from her chest to her face. Was it that obvious? She had thought of Gus as her own dear secret. Not that she wanted him to be a secret forever, but she could not think of how they might present their affection for each other to, say, her brother. Or her parents. She knew her brother respected Gus, but that would not necessarily translate to acceptance, would it? While still in England, preparing to come to Walhachin, she had heard that the colonies were classless, but she had not yet seen evidence of this. Miss Flowerdew would not allow men to enter her establishment unless they were dressed appropriately—Flora could not imagine Gus bothering to put on a collar or tie, though he must own such things. And there was an attitude in Walhachin not so different to what she’d left in Wiltshire, that labourers did not even really speak the same language as their employers, that women needed to be sheltered from such people, that a person’s breeding was implicit in the care they took to remember such details as gloves and cards. Local ranchers were seldom invited to the monthly balls at the hall, there were mutterings about “trade” and “belowstairs” when certain names came up. Gus was apart from much of this. He was not Chinese, not Indian—those were obvious and had a place. His accent and vocabulary indicated an education, his table manners at the few events where labourers ate with their employers were curious for their excellence. No one could place him, quite. And he told Flora he liked it that way.

“Jane, is it so obvious?”

“Flora, you positively glow! Your skin, your eyes—you have the look of someone who has found out the secret of youth and beauty, which love surely provides. That little smile that plays upon your lips like a few bars of secret music. May I ask to whom you owe this bliss?”

“I will tell you, Jane, but you must promise me that you will say nothing about it, not even to Allan. There is someone special, yes, and I am not ashamed of him, but we are not yet ready to tell the world, not even George. Will you promise me, my dear and curious friend? Because quite honestly I am dying to tell someone.”

Jane assented.

“It is Gus, Jane. Gus Alexander. He works for my brother from time to time, and of course other orchardists too. You will understand why it is a little difficult to make this known right now, but what you don’t know perhaps is that Gus is not entirely what he appears. He comes from reputable people actually and has set out to make his own life. There is a past, of that I am certain. He is quite cut off from his parents who live in Victoria and whom he has not seen in seven years. But he is wonderful, and . . .”

Jane cut in. “Make no apologies, Flora. I have always liked Gus, as does Allan—did you know he’d worked here one summer, during haying? And Allan always felt there was no one like him for the breaking of young horses. Gus never called it ‘breaking’ though; he said he was gentling them, and watching a colt new to the saddle under him, it was easy to understand why. His voice, so calm, and he never wore spurs. Didn’t need them. Horses responded to him gladly. And yes, you’re right to acknowledge that there is a past. I think it involved debts of some sort. Something mysterious and rather dark. But there is also intelligence. He’s extremely capable and, well, it must be said, he is devastatingly handsome!”

Flora blushed. She thought so too, of course. She remembered how she had gone quite faint at the sight of Gus’s wrists, the undersides of his arms, that first day they had ridden together to the sad house in Skeetchestn where Grace was dying even as they let their horses lope along the Deadman River. Little did she know then that a man’s arms were just a suggestion of his body unclothed, the beauty of the skin at the tops of his thighs, the curve of his buttocks. And that the beauty was accompanied by such pleasure as the man in turn admired the skin of the woman, touching it with tenderness. No one had told her of these things, prepared her for the way her body craved the weight of his body on top of her or the shape of it beneath her, ballast between her and the sky, a firm anchor between her and the earth.

“One problem, Jane, is my family. At least I think this will be a problem anyway. George may well like Gus as a worker but as a consort for his sister? I suspect not. And the fact that I have been meeting him secretly? Oh my goodness, George will be furious about that. But I am determined now to make my own decisions about my life, though I am still too nervous to tell any of my family that I am doing so! I am praying for more courage. Gus tells me I am developing a mind of my own. No wonder. If I mention a rule or an objection of George’s to a particular thing, Gus encourages me to think about it for myself and break the rule if it suits me to do so. But not openly, not yet. So I will confess I’ve developed a taste for malt whisky. There. It feels good to say it!”

Jane smiled at Flora’s confession. “Love does make us flout the rules a little, I think. And I, too, like the occasional glass of whisky. I’ve never understood why it is taken for granted that a woman would prefer Pimm’s Cup. Ugh.” She shivered extravagantly.

Gradually over the next few days, Flora found herself confiding more in Jane than she had ever done with a friend. A married woman, Jane could discreetly provide information to her friend, could answer questions Flora would never have asked her mother, a beloved but remote presence, even when they’d lived in the same house. Flora had vague but confused ideas about her body and its workings. Jane was able to set her straight on aspects of the monthly cycle, irregularities, and discomfort.

“It has always amazed me,” said Jane, “that girls enter into womanhood without the simplest knowledge of any of this. Why weren’t we taught these things in school? At least as important as the date Caesar crossed the Rubicon or Alps or whatever it was he did. I was lucky; my aunty Hortense is something of a suffragette, and she took it upon herself to tell me about reproduction. She even had a little chart. I remember her quizzing me on, well, the ovaries. At our coming-out ball in Vancouver, one girl had her entire evening ruined for her when a red patch appeared on her white dress. She hadn’t known to expect her monthlies, thought the whole thing was a terrible injury. And was of course mortified in front of a room of people, none of whom will ever forget. So an injury, I expect, is an accurate way to describe it.”

Flora told Jane about her own coming-out season in London, spring and summer of 1909. She was one of a group of thirty girls presented to the King and Queen, all of them clad in white dresses with silk trains drifting behind them.

“Mine was Empire-line, with a draping I hoped would look Grecian. Silk, of course, and embroidered with seed pearls. I remember feeling grateful, when the dressmaker came to our house for fittings, that the season wasn’t a few years earlier when my cousin was presented. Her dress was in the style of that year and made her look like an elaborate letter S.”

“Did you feel a little like a sacrificial lamb, Flora, being dressed in white like a bride and paraded in front of that man? Our impression here in Canada was that he was something of a roué! There was talk even of mistresses—all those actresses!”

Flora laughed. “I didn’t think that then. I didn’t dare. It was just something we were groomed for, our season in London, where it was hoped we would meet the right young man and instantly become one of the hostesses behind the scene for the next round of girls. But I do see it now. My brothers were sent to school and expected to do something, even if it was the church, but I had a very casual series of governesses at home to teach me a little French, a little geometry, because of course I would marry and needed only to produce children and run a fine house.”

“It was different here because my family couldn’t afford governesses, so I went to school,” said Jane. “And my mother wanted me to have more than she’d had, more possibilities.”

“That’s heartening, Jane. But you didn’t have brothers, did you? It seems all the family hopes are invested in the young men. But I did love to draw, and painted a little, and one of the tutors was very good at helping with lessons. My mother was pleased when I began to create designs for needlepoint. What I didn’t know, to be quite honest, was how constrained my life was. I see that now, especially when I ride with Gus. These skies—well, I feel I can breathe in a way I never felt before. I don’t remember noticing the skies before. Though there was one coming-out ball held in a house with a ceiling painted like an open sky, deep blue, with stars. The young girls in their gowns dancing like meadow flowers on slender stalks. And the King standing in his uniform. We were brought before him, as you say, like spring lambs.”

“What was it like, meeting him? Them? Did he seem like the sort of mortal who might dally with an actress? And was she really as aloof as I imagine she was?”

“The King was quite fat, I remember, and yes, his Queen was aloof. She was lovely, though. And the whole thing was very quick—we were presented, they took our hands, mumbled a few words. She had an accent, of course, coming from Denmark. There were rumours among the young women, particularly those who lived in London and whose families were part of the King’s set, rumours of his appetites, shall we call them?”

“What happened to your dress? Did you wear it again?”

“Oh, Jane, of course not. Did you ever wear yours again?”

Jane shook her head no.

Flora continued: “Mine was put into the wardrobe with all the other gowns, my mother’s and my own, made for special occasions and never expected to be worn more than once. We kept them all the same, much as my father kept the trophies won by his horses and his prize water lilies. Proof of performance, I suppose. The shoes I did wear again, and the gloves with the beaded embroidery. No, the dress will be there still, at Watermeadows, beside a ball gown made for Mother for the presentation, cream silk, that one was, with black lace and jet bead, very extravagant, even for her. But not quite right for the next year and so put into the wardrobe with its sachets of cedarwood and lavender to keep away the moths.”

Then Flora was quiet, remembering the months that followed. The years. There were dances in London, and parties. A series of young men sized her up. She’d had no idea what to expect of courtship, but surely it had to be more than a clammy hand pressed to her back, discreet questions to determine what came with her. Land? Horses? A sizeable sum? She had not anticipated the stubborn voice that told her mother and father that she could not imagine a life with this one or that one. It was like another girl speaking, using courage Flora had no idea she possessed (but was in the process of finding again). Two years after her coming-out season, George was planning to come to Canada and Flora was still without a suitor, dangerously close to being considered too old—at nineteen!—to interest the young men with money, or prospects, or both. And perhaps a reputation for fussiness beyond what was reasonable. She was not quite a beauty, though she had a look that was lovely in profile, and wonderful hair. The men were eyeing the new crop of girls in London. And when she expressed an interest in joining George at Walhachin, there had been a collective sigh of relief. Already it had become known as a place where matches could be made. All those single men from good families, and so few suitable women.