Scattered Bones (16 page)

Lucretia had been inspired by the retreat, and began planning how she would transform the lives of Pelican Narrows’ female population. She would teach them how to crochet, provide helpful hints on modern housekeeping, and form educational groups where she would lecture on such topics as famous women in the bible – she had even packed a copy of Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting of Judith chopping off the head of Holofernes to use as an illustration.

But she was quickly disillusioned. She soon realized that the Indians were far more dexterous with a needle than she would ever be. They couldn’t imagine owning a “Buck’s Sanitary Porcelain Enameled Combination Range,” the subject of Lucretia’s first talk, illustrated with a rotogravure photo, primarily because they knew it would be years before gas or electricity reached their community.
And finally, to her dismay, she discovered they weren’t at all fascinated with Judith, or Hannah, or Esther or even Mary, mother of Jesus. Florence, who translated as Lucretia lectured, said, “Perhaps if you had talked about Kiskanakwas, the great medicine woman who converted to Christianity, they would have been more interested.” But Lucretia knew nothing about Kiskanakwas, and had no desire to find out.

There was nothing to be done. She must simply be brave and endure this wretched place. In a few years they would return to Toronto, and life could begin again.

Chapter Twenty

Lucretia hurries back
to the rectory.
She wants a banner painted for tonight’s soirée: “PELICIAN NARROWS WELCOMES THE GREATEST AUTHOR IN THE WORLD.” Since Izzy possesses the only artistic talent in the family, she was asked to help. The girl mumbled that she would try to find time between the races and the picnic and the translating, but Lucretia knows that she won’t show up. Her daughter, it seems, holds her in little esteem. All her affection goes to her father, or to Florence, or to the Indians, Annie and Sally. A bothersome nag is how she views her mother.

It wasn’t always like that. As a baby, with that halo of red, curly hair, sky-blue eyes and dimpled fat cheeks, Izzy was everything that Lucretia had dreamed of. The name Isabella seemed perfect. Ernst liked it because in Hebrew it meant God’s Promise. And Lucretia thought of all the queens – Isabella of France, Isabella, Queen of Castille, Isabella of Austria. But the little girl was so cute, so affectionate, a diminutive seemed natural – Bella, Spanish and Italian for beautiful, was perfect, her mother thought. But, on the day of her baptism, someone came up with Izzy, and it instantly stuck. Probably a good thing since she’s turned into such a daredevil.

As a toddler, she fell out of her crib and suffered a concussion; as a schoolgirl, she tumbled from the roof of a tool shed and fractured her arm; as a teenager, she smashed into a tree while skiing and broke her collar bone. Indeed, games of sport are the only thing she seems to care about.

Certainly fashion is at the bottom of the list. Izzy doesn’t know a Chanel from a Patou and, moreover, has said time and again that she doesn’t give a damn. How could Lucretia end up with such a daughter? It must be God’s punishment for some past sin.

She’s told Izzy often enough that she should be grateful for the loving childhood she’s enjoyed, so different from Lucretia’s own.

On their annual trips to Toronto, Lawrence Hollingshead always
sent his big Buick to fetch his daughter and granddaughter from the
train station. There were always soft beds with embroidered
sheets and feather pillows. Thick towels, scented soap and plenty of
hot water made for heavenly baths – a far cry from the tin can that serves as a tub at Pelican Narrows. The dinner table was always set beautifully, with brilliant white linen serviettes, fine china, and heavy sterling silver cutlery. The meals served by the maid were delicious, particularly the desserts – cakes and puddings made especially for Izzy.

Yet within minutes of their arrival, Lucretia would feel the depression descend, smothering her. She’d fight it, not wanting her black mood to spoil their holiday, but it was a terrible struggle. Memories of her loneliness flooded back to haunt her.

That her mother succumbed to tuberculosis when Lucretia was only seven is the tragedy of her life, she realizes that. But what she doesn’t know is if her father’s coldness, his cynicism and censure were a result of that untimely death. Probably not. Lucretia thinks now that there was something in Leyland’s background – her grandparents were dead by the time she was born, so she doesn’t know what – that moulded his hatred for most of the human race.

She sighs as she remembers those early years. Day after day she’d race home, eager to describe what happened at school, only to be greeted by silence, her father ensconced in his study, the dour Scottish housekeeper too busy with her washing and cooking to find time for the child.

Her salvation was her school friends, as many as she could cultivate. As Professor Hollingshead was a highly respected academic, their parents opened their homes and their hearts to his motherless daughter. The social whirl was what saved her from falling into the dark abyss. And now, in wretched Pelican Narrows even that has been taken from her.

Well, today will be different. Lucretia opens a carved sandalwood box where she keeps her precious things, and takes out a small perfume bottle.
Cleopatra’s Boudoir
.
She closes her eyes as she breathes in the heavenly scent. She pats a few drops behind her ears, down her décolletage , between her thighs. She’s ready.

~•~

From the moment
she climbed out of bed that morning she had admonished herself, no, no, no, she would not give in to temptation. She would control herself like the well-brought-up lady she is. But as the hour approached, her resolve melted away like butter left in the sun.

She’s lucky today. Everyone is engaged in some silly activity or other so she won’t have to take so many precautions to avoid being spotted.

She wends her way up the hill and then turns sharply to the right. The trail here is so overgrown it can barely be made out, there are fallen trees blocking it, and at one point a stream gurgles across it. Lucretia has been here many times before and easily navigates the obstacles. In twenty minutes she arrives at a small, windowless trapper’s cabin which, since it’s situated deep in a grove of paper birch and jack pine, is barely visible. She navigates through the small door into the gloom. She can’t see a thing, but her nose tingles at that intoxicating mix of chewing tobacco and expensive men’s cologne. She feels her heart pounding.

He comes up behind her, cups her breasts in his hands, presses his engorgement into her rear – like a battering iron, she thinks. He is wiry, and strong, and hard. He undoes the buttons of her frock, pulls first her dress and then her chemise over her head. There’s a routine. She takes her right breast and places it in his mouth. He licks and sucks and bites until, in her rapture, she can bear it no longer. After the left breast has received its punishment, she takes from the corner the switch cut from an elm branch and hands it to him. He motions to her to lean over the rickety table, pulls down her stockings and panties. He whips her bare flesh, lightly at first, then more harshly. Red welts flare up on her buttocks. There is a rule strictly adhered to – he will discipline her until she cries out. She endures it as long as she can. It is so exquisite. Finally, he rams into her from behind. The bliss – savage, fierce – explodes.

He has not uttered a word, but once both are satisfied, and they have caught their breath, he says, “So, my Lady Lucy” – he is the only one she has ever allowed to call her Lucy – “I have a present for you.” He takes a necklace from his pocket and is about to put it around her neck. “Let me see,” she squeals, and opens the door a little to let some light in. From a leather throng dangles what looks like a human tooth.

“What on earth!” she cries. He grabs it before she can throw it on the ground. “What a reaction to something so precious! My dear, you’re looking at our fortune. Soon I’ll be wining and dining you in New York City.”

He’s hinted before that they might run away together. Could it possibly be true? What a scandal if she left Ernst! Far from feeling remorse, she actually enjoys thinking about it. She imagines telling her father, “A powerful, determined man, that’s what you’ve always wanted for me. Meet Arthur Jan, a successful businessman, a lover of fine things, and, you’ll be pleased to know, a devout Anglican.”

~•~

One lovely spring morning
Ernst`s sermon had been particularly tedious, and Lucretia, looking for something – anything – to occupy her mind, zeroed in on Arthur sitting in the pew across the aisle. With his receding hair line, heavy black eyebrows, and long pointed nose, he could hardly be called handsome. Nonetheless, there was something rakish about him which on that particular boring morning was tremendously appealing.

“That jersey chemise suits you,” Arthur told her at the lunch afterwards. “The soft gray plays up the azure of your eyes perfectly.” She was astounded. That a fur trader would even notice what she wore never mind intelligently comment on it was miraculous.

Not long afterwards she had been out soliciting donations to buy wool for the knitting group. Since Arthur Jan was one of the church’s major benefactors, she knocked on his door. He was delighted to see her.

“Come on in, have some tea,” he said. “I’d be happy to give you a tour of my little abode.” She
couldn’t believe her eyes – a virtual palace of treasures! The china, the oil paintings, the bronzes, the porcelain. From then on, whenever they met, they talked about nothing but his latest acquisitions – on one occasion, a Vincennes milk pot, on another, a porcelain cockerel from the Edo period in Japan. Lucretia came to believe that he was the most knowledgeable, the most intriguing man she had ever met.

One afternoon they met by chance on the trail leading up the hill behind the HBC post. He took her by the elbow, and, without saying a word, led her, not to his home – with the housekeeper in attendance that would have been too dangerous – but to a trapper`s cabin.

Lucretia knows that depravity has entered deep into her soul. Everything that defines her worth – her family, her moral authority as a clergyman’s wife, her God – are being darkly besmirched by her affair with Arthur. She should be devastated by her guilt, but all she feels is excitement, elation. The terrible tediousness of life in Pelican Narrows has vanished. She’s intoxicated with the clandestine world that has miraculously fallen into place.

She believes that her sinfulness is as much Ernst’s fault as her own. Caspar Milquetoast in the flesh. His whole life has been one caving in after another, the worst example being the fiasco at St. George’s On-the-Hill. That wretched vicar, Charles Goldsmith, had the gall to blame Ernst for the financial scandal that
he
had spawned. And
what did Ernst do? Turn his cheek and whimper into his pillow. That’s how they had ended up in this dreary place, pretending to be missionaries.

Of all the many men who had courted her, why on earth had she chosen Ernst Wentworth? He was kind, that was a big attraction, and sweet, and good-looking in his round-faced, boyish way. Everyone called him Vicky, and there was something appealing in that. But, in reality, it had more to do with her father. Of all her suitors, Ernst was the one he disapproved of the least. Lucretia still has no idea why.

The first few years of their marriage had been happy enough although they had quarrelled. Because of his duties as curate at St. George’s On-the-Hill, he was away more often than he was at home, and that made her angry, but it was nothing that a kiss and kind words couldn’t patch up.

And she had relished her role as a clergyman’s wife, performing her duties well, so
she
thought. It was a charming joke, the odd items she rounded up each year for the church bazaar’s white elephant booth – a stuffed beaver, a likeness of Alexander the Great, a set of ivory toothpicks once owned by the Earl of Derby. She was thought to be witty and refreshingly outspoken, at least by those in the congregation who mattered.

Ernst had been overjoyed when Izzy was born and, no question, he’s been a good father. But after his humiliation by Canon Goldsmith, any romance left in their marriage had drifted away like chimney smoke. And with the arrival of offspring, Ernst had decided that his conjugal duties had been discharged; passion in the marriage bed was now as rare as hyacinths in the Pelican Narrows’ spring. Her husband’s butterflies meant more to him than any human, with the exception of Izzy. Lucretia is sure of that.

Chapter Twenty-One

It’s already five p.m.
Lucretia hurries along the path to the rectory and, on the way, meets her daughter coming from the opposite direction. She hopes she doesn’t look too dishevelled. After Arthur left, she’d combed her hair, powdered, put on lipstick. Still, a certain taletale odour might linger. But all Izzy says is, “Mother, you’re all aglow. You must be excited about your party tonight. ”

Annie is busy laying out the good silverware and china for the buffet. By now the housekeeper is exhausted from all the work she’s had to do for this stupid dinner. For days Lucretia talked about the menu but, of course, it was up to her, Annie, to perform miracles.

She’s emptied the larder of all the delicacies in fancy bottles and cans that Lucretia brought back from Toronto and stored for a special occasion. The guests are to start with a
macédoine de fruits
– canned fruit cooked with syrup and then cooled in a big kettle set in the lake. Next will be served the main course – creamed chicken with bread croustades. Annie talked Angus Highway into giving up one of his precious hens; Florence has been prevailed upon to bake the crusty buns. There’s a dish called Perfection Salad which has been nothing but a headache. Annie kept peering in the ice box, praying that the damn thing would jell, and somehow miraculously there it is, jiggling away. And then, finally, there’s the coconut and chocolate layer cake. Lucretia takes credit for finding it in the magazine, but it was Annie who had to actually create it.