Lily's Story (42 page)

L
ily rubbed and rubbed
as if the ache might take advantage of the slightest let-up on her
part. She lay her breasts – engorged and twingeing not unpleasantly
– against the small of Tom’s back and listened to his heart
thumping.

“
He’s alive,
but that’s about all you can say. He wasn’t supposed to be in there
lifting, but the crate was badly built and it got stuck, and ol’
Bags must’ve thought he was still a spring chicken the way he tore
into it and swore away at us till the damn thing came loose, and
buried him. We had to get it off with a block and tackle, and not
once did the man cry out.”

“
Don’t Tom,
please.”

“
I gotta talk
about it, woman!
”

Still, he
didn’t turn to look at her, and when her hands reached for the ache
between his shoulders, he leaned back into them. “Both feet crushed
like
tomato pulp, blood was
squirting everywhere. Gimpy was sick all over himself. But Bags is
a tough bugger. He’s alive. And the doctor says he’ll likely have
both his feet, though the bones won’t ever set straight and there’s
still a chance of gangrene. His cousin came down from London;
they’re holed up in a dirty little rooming house on George Street.
We went to see him today. The company’s gonna dock us a day’s pay,
but we went anyway.
Fuck
them!
”

“
We could take
up a collection or somethin’,” Lily said very quietly. “I got lots
of preserves left.”

Tom
didn’t answer. Then he said, “He’s
got no job, Lil. They told him yesterday. He begged them for an
office job, he swore he’d be better in a month, he’d be able to get
’round on crutches, he knew the work, he’d been with them for six
years, from the very beginning. Warden Hargreaves said he was sorry
but he was only carrying out company policy, orders given way over
his head and all that shit. You know the line.”

Lily nodded. A thrill of fear
shot through her.

“
I’ve made up
my mind,” he said. “I’m going to see Mr. Warden Hargreaves
tomorrow. In his office. I’m going to get Bags Starkey’s job
back.”

“
Don’t go,”
Lily said.

“
I’ve got to.
I don’t expect you’d understand, but this is something I
just
have
to do. If I don’t, I won’t be able to live with
myself.”

“
I know that,”
Lily said. “I know why you have to go. And I know what’ll happen.
I’m only askin’ for the baby’s sake, not my own.”

“
Nothing ever
happens in this world,” Tom said angrily, every trace of gentleness
erased in his gathering rage, “because nobody is willing to stand
up and be counted. Nobody wants to fight.
Nobody!
”

Lily wanted to
reply, but she held her peace. She might have said this:
there are many ways a body can
fight, though I don’t know of any ways of winnin’ – yet.

“W
ell,” Tom said to
her, his fury undiminished, “I got the satisfaction of telling that
cowardly bastard what I thought of him.” His hands shook as he
poured himself a mug of cold tea. Lily was knitting in the rocker
by the south window. She felt Tom’s stare on her, keen as an
accusation.

“
An’ he fired
you,” Lily said without emotion.

“
He certainly
did not.” Tom pounced on her presumption. “I put the fear of the
devil himself into that yellow-livered little weasel. He didn’t
dare fire me. I told him where he could shove the Grand
Trunk.”

Lily continued, starting a new
row after re-counting her stitches.

“
He only had
the guts to suspend me,” Tom announced triumphantly, and Lily heard
him scrabbling under the sink for the big jug. “I got a free
holiday till October,” he laughed. She heard the gurgle of raw
whiskey. “Can’t do without me in the car-shops. What do you think
of that, eh?”

What Lily thought of it
mattered little. What it meant was that without a garden and at
best a bit of casual work for Tom over the summer, they would have
to spend every cent of their savings just to survive. There would
be no white-walled cottage in the new village. Lily continued to
knit.

“
You keep your
nose clean all summer, he tells me, and I’ll let you back next
winter. Sure, what he means is I kiss enough company arse, they’ll
let me keep on working for them. Who knows, maybe I’ll get good at
it, eh?
Eh?
”

G
impy arrived shortly
to chaperone his friend through the bleak evening ahead. Lily went
to the bedroom and lay down. Even with the comforter wrapped around
her, she found herself shivering. She caught no words from the
other room, only low mutterings and occasional jabs of sound
accompanied by the steady clink of crockery. With her teeth
chattering she rose in the darkness, fumbled under the bed till she
felt the leather sachet in her grasp, opened it and drew into her
hand the familiar talisman. She left it burning there till its
allusive warmth spread through her whole body and beckoned sleep
her way. When she woke, the magic jasper lay on her bare throat,
beating there like a hummingbird’s ruby heart.

She stepped
into the quick heat of the big room. The kitchen stove throbbed
jovially.
Tom was standing by
the door, fully dressed, his walking boots agleam. In the crook of
his arm lay the twelve-gauge double-barrel.

“
Where’re you
goin’?” Lily asked.

“
You all
right? You had a lot of covers on you.”

“
Where’re you
goin’ with that?”

He grinned, and she saw
with relief the blend of daring and reserve she so loved and
trusted. “I’m going hunting,” he said. “Rabbits. Got to put food on
the table, now don’t we?”

W
ith the baby due in a
few weeks, Tom tried very hard to adjust to the situation he had
put himself in. Lily sensed that his resentment was directed only
partly at the Grand Trunk. He was positively heroic in his attempts
to keep himself busy and useful. He went hunting up in First Bush
almost every morning. He helped Gimpy and Maudie’s husband, Garth,
trap a few tardy muskrats down along the verges of the swamp. Their
skins hung stretched and reeking in the little barn beside the
latest slaughtered cottontail. He walked over to Sarnia to hang
around the boiler works or one of the sawmills in hope of picking
up some casual and very menial labour. In these ways he managed to
keep out of the house till suppertime and arrive home with a Tom
Marshall grin on his face. Sometimes she would stretch out on the
cot after supper, and Tom would run a caressing hand over her belly
for what seemed like hours on end, neither of them saying a single
word, the slow sunset easing darkness into the spaces around them,
as if a spell was about to be cast and auguries about to be tested
on a sympathetic wind. This baby was even more active than the
first, throwing tantrums of fist-and-feet in several directions and
at times of its own choosing. Her back ached with the weight. It’s
all right, she kept telling it – him – you just keep kicking all
you want. I want you big and strong and alive.

While they were eating
supper one evening early in May, Gimpy arrived with a piece of
paper stuck to the fingers of his right hand. “It’s a telegram,” he
said. “Come in on the telegraph ’bout an hour ago. I told Farley
I’d bring it on up here. I thought I’d better.”

From the last remark, from the
anxiety on his face and his reluctance to hand over the fretful
paper, Lily was certain that he had seen the news and that it was
dreadful.

“
It’s your
Auntie,” he said, looking away.

Tom
ripped the envelope from Gimpy’s hand
and tore it open.

Seven months and not a word
from Aunt Bridie. For weeks Lily had waited; she had gone to the
post office whenever she was in the village, hoping not for an
explanation but simply a word, a greeting from afar, a wave from
some other life in which she was still, for a while at least, Aunt
Bridie. But no news of any kind had come, and the postal watch
ended. I don’t even know where you are, she thought not without
bitterness; I can’t comfort you if you need me, I can’t give you a
better reason for living, I don’t know what to do with this
stored-up, useless love.

Tom
was mumbling over the words to
himself. She saw him go pale, and while her heart sank, she knew
perfectly well that her Aunt was not dead. All winter long, she
recalled, I’ve heard your voice in the silences of my morning
kitchen, in the hollows of my sleep, in the dream below my dreams –
not as it used to be, brave and clear and certain, but very very
faint, a voice calling out yet too weary or bewildered to compose a
full cry for help, too proud ever to slip into whimper. You are
alive, Auntie:
what are you
trying to tell me?

“
It’s Auntie,”
Tom said. “She’s had some kind of attack. She wants me in London,
as soon as possible.”

T
om’s letter from
London, which Gimpy helped her decipher, said that he would be away
at least a week. But she was not to worry, as Aunt Elsepth had
merely had a good faint one morning and fallen down against her
bedstead. She had a nasty bruise on her temple, was as forgetful
and cheery as ever, and determined to spoil him and Lucille, now
her sole companion. She was wildly excited about the expected
arrival and bent on living long enough to see it heading a regiment
someday. The doctor reported to Tom that she may have had a mild
stroke but did not see any cause for alarm. In the last sentence –
delivered with a wondrous blush from Gimpy – Tom urged her to cross
her legs tight till he could get home.

Lily herself was not
concerned about actually bearing the baby. Gimpy came for a while
every afternoon and Maudie brought her some goodies one morning and
helped a bit with the house. Lily was having some trouble getting
to sleep, and when she did, the dreams that assailed her from the
deep part of night left her sweating and exhausted in the morning.
Something was coming apart. Tom should be here. She needed him
close. She felt he had to be close when the time came. Every night
since Bags’ accident Tom’s body had coiled away from her, a trigger
of muscle without a target. If anything were to happen to Aunt
Elspeth...If something were to happen to the baby...She just
remembered she didn’t even know the midwife’s last name.

The night before she
thought Tom might be coming home, worn out and fretful, Lily
surprised herself by falling into a dreamless sleep. The evening
had been very warm for mid-May, the air was suffused with lilac and
wild-apple blossom. She lay down on top of the comforter with only
a cotton nightshirt on, gazing at the swell of her flesh until
sleep relieved her of all speculation. Some time towards dawn the
wind shifted to the east and blew with the usual abandon of a
spring storm. When Lily woke, the sun was up but smothered by a
skyful of nimbus cloud bullying its way westward. The wind howled
out of its secret, zigzagging centre and roared through the pinery
and fern-leafed hardwoods with the hoarse clamour of a doomsday
horn. She sat bolt upright. Her nightshirt was a sail. Her sweat
cooled and receded. She punched her son; he punched
back.

Before she was certain she was
even awake, Lily found herself outside. The nightshirt flapped
about her waist as the storm’s breath claimed every part of her
nakedness. She felt her nipples sprung like crocus-buds under snow.
She felt the obscene, clammy, overweening presence of something so
vile even the wind disowned it and the rage of rain that now struck
her could not assuage or cleanse.

Soaked, shivering, wild with
dread – she seemed to be running without any sense except that of
flight itself. Within seconds she found herself standing in front
of the battered door of Bachelor Bill’s hut. She stood there until
her breathing came back to normal, and longer. A deep calm
pervaded, body and spirit. It’s happened, she thought. She pushed
the door aside and went in.

Bill was dead, though she had
to walk over and touch him to confirm her fear. He was sitting
where he always did: in his chair by the south-east window – the
only window – with a clear view of the lane, his neighbour’s
cottage and the rising sun over the tree-line. His eyes were wide
open, full of arrested anticipation, and aimed down the lane that
ended at the Errol Road, as if he were at any moment expecting the
arrival of someone dear to his heart.

L
ily was still sitting
by the stove wrapped in a shawl and wondering if she could walk all
the way to the village through the gumbo left by the storm, when
she heard Tom’s call from the road. She went out to greet him,
embarrassed by the flush of joy she felt but unable to stop herself
from trotting awkwardly towards the bend beyond the gate. What she
saw stopped her breath. Tom was striding down the lane waving to
her, and behind him, skipping to keep pace, bounced a slight female
figure, also waving. Lily waited until they were almost upon her
before she allowed herself to believe it was Lucille.

B
achelor Bill, as they
were to always remember him, was buried in the public cemetery of
Sarnia less than half-a-mile from the property he had occupied so
long no one could recall him ever not living there. Tom had sent a
telegram to the asylum in London, hoping they could find some way
to tell Violet. In the meantime the sheriff’s bailiffs arrived to
claim the valuables. It appeared that Bachelor Bill had not paid
his taxes with the money Tom gave him and that the Grand Trunk
bought him out for the sums owed. Warden Hargreaves, it was said,
had personally intervened to keep the acquisition quiet and permit
the old fellow to live out his days in security and dignity. The
day after the funeral Tom received word back from the authorities
in London.