Swamp Angel (18 page)

“W
ell for pete’s sake what did jever come for then!” shouted Edward Vardoe, very unpleasant.

The blonde continued to weep.

“Y
ou go to hell,” said Edward Vardoe and banged the door of the flat behind him.

H
e thought he would try Ireen once more.

“Hello, is that Ireen?” said Edward Vardoe.

“Iree-een, Iree-een,” screamed a voice at the other end of the telephone. Then “I thought she was just laying down but she mighta went out.”

“Okay. I’ll phone again,” said Edward Vardoe and went on down to the office.

M
rs. Severance to Maggie.

“I miss you Maggie I miss you. That was an awful wedding. I wore that hat. I’m glad you never saw it. We all simpered. Alberto wouldn’t go and I don’t blame him. He says Albert is a drip which is absurd. He said Go and see her marry that drip! No! and then he was vulgar. He likes to think that he is in love with Hilda but that is just a pose that he enjoys. He is not in love and I am liable to be stuck with him for some time but that is all right because he is a good boy and often funny. We have bought a dog. You asked me about the in-laws. The father scowls and I don’t wonder. He is a politically minded printer. He comes to see me and I give him my weeklies, a nice entente. I like bitter men myself and I don’t think his wife notices that he is. She is – was a pretty woman, shallow, lacking that third dimension that includes perception and awareness of other people. She is obtuse. However, she’s Hilda’s mother-in-law not mine, and Hilda seems happy to be in a nice conventional family at last and it has not occurred to her yet to be bored by her mother-in-law. Albert is a lamb” (just what kind of a lamb, wondered
Maggie seeing a sheep face) “and you would like him. He seems indifferent but is thoughtful and has a sense of humor which he will need. Hilda becomes more conventional every minute. He rules her with a rod of silk. He grew a beard for a wedding present for her and she was delighted. They should be in Italy by now and they will feel quite at home there with the beard on. It was a great satisfaction to me and I know that Philip would have been glad that we could give them that present of Italy from us. They are likely to have two children and no more and Hilda will spoil them with overattention as a compensation for her childhood (yes, I know, my fault). She will consider them perfect. I see it all. She thinks she does not like children but you watch.

“Isn’t it strange Maggie – nearly all stories have been about love or fighting and all love stories have been about faithless, unhappy, or frustrated love. No one can write about perfect love because it cannot be committed to words even by those who know about it. I think Albert and Hilda have a very fair working chance. They will not have perfect love but I foresee a nice kind of happiness and am thankful.

“Maggie I miss you very much to talk to and I need humanizing. I’m a bad influence on myself. I used to think my judgment sound and now I mistrust myself. Is there any way I could get up to that place of yours this spring. I could help you with the cooking, you know how good I am. How could I get up. I could stay a week or a month according. Is there plumbing. I regret very much that I sent you the Swamp Angel. I have tried to substitute inkwells and can openers and so forth but the balance in the hand is not the same and I cannot juggle them. The thing was that I saw at that time the finger of Death approaching and I grew sententious. Now I have recovered and while still an unusually religious woman have become worldly
again and miss my vain toys. Next time Death whispers in my ear I will take it easy and not get so serious about it and the same for you. I forget, did I ask you if there is any plumbing at the place or just those holes outside. That’s fine in youth but for old age it’s no good.”

Maggie to Mrs. Severance.

“My dearest Nell, thank you for your letter. You didn’t say much about the wedding did you. You’re a bad reporter – what Hilda wore, the bridesmaids if any, the presents, a reception? their new house, the speeches? You thought about nothing but your own hat. I fancy you have behaved very badly over that. About coming up. Let me assure you at once that I’d love to see you but that I am too busy to see anyone now that we’re going up to get things in order and when the season gets into its stride, so I needn’t deceive you. I should not allow you into the kitchen with all your wines and garlic. I cook cheap on different terms up there – do you realize that we are twenty-five miles from anywhere? A thoroughly nice young Chinese boy whose name is Angus is coming up next week to start in working with and for us, a sort of partner, because his father is giving him a large old good car which will be a lifesaver for transportation and if things go well we’re going to get a jeep. Angus is sweet and strong and biddable and he seems to have fallen for the place. We’ve had some very earnest letters from him and if you really want to come on those bare terms he would take good care of you. He says ‘My Dad operates taxis so I can assure you I am a rasponsable driver.’ Traveling the way you’d like to travel it would take two days because you’d stop overnight somewhere. It can be done in one day’s hard driving from Vancouver. There is no plumbing, just privies, but next year we hope to have it. Nell, I long to see you, but I cannot fancy you enjoying it up there. There’s
nothing but fishing and scenery.

“About the Angel. It may not be very significant to you, sending it away, but it is to me. It was right to do that. That mood will return, dear Nell, and you will be glad that the Angel’s safe. I am so sure that our ability to throw away the substance, to lose all yet keep the essence, is very important.

“If you decide not to come up, and I dare not urge you, let us plan to join each other for a week when this season is finished at some such comfortable place as Kelowna or Kamloops where you will have all the plumbing you require and a better bed. Wouldn’t that be gorgeous. I will never go back to Vancouver in any case, not even to see you. You asked me in your last but one about my people here. Quite perfect except for one recurring bad obstacle, I’ll tell you when I see you. In the meantime I pretend I’m a swimmer and I just swim round it and hope I can continue to do so because this is the place in all the world that I like. I miss you too dear Nell. For me there is no one like you.”

Scenery and fishing. “Fishing,” muttered Mrs. Severance, reading, scornful, thwarted. “Fishing! Sadists! Bull fighters! People must be mad.”

“I
’ll not stand for it!” said Edward Vardoe.

“You bet your sweet life you will,” said Ireen.

“But …”

“You heard me,” said Ireen fixing him with a light green look.

“Okay Ireen that’s okay by me,” said Edward humbly, hurriedly.

“Q
uit looking at me like that.”

“I wasn’t looking at you like that, honey,” said Edward Vardoe.

“Honey yourself and see how you like it,” said Ireen. Eyes like a spaniel. Eyes like a dog. Make me sick. “Quit looking at me like that!”

“Okay Ireen.”

Eyes of a dog, and a dog’s wages.

T
hat winter in Kamloops had been very pleasant. Some thing like harmony seemed to be restored between husband and wife. Alan, getting on for nine, began to be a boy among boys, and rough. This harmony – temporary or permanent – increased after Maggie had told her history, and after she gave to Vera the Little Vera which was highly esteemed. Maggie did not often visit Henry Corder’s house. She thought it better so, and she worked each evening in her room at her old occupation of tying flies. She sent most of them to Mr. Spencer in Vancouver and had a constant market. She made some acquaintances. Working at the flies she thought, dreaming, of Polly, so innocent. She could think more easily, more often, of Polly now. It was because of Alan, perhaps – and time, of course.

On Christmas Day Maggie joined the Gunnarsens and Henry Corder. She brought with her a present for Haldar and Vera together, and books and balls for Alan, and some flies for Henry Corder. She had looked for and found in Kamloops a nice long piece of pine wood of good graining about two inches thick. This she had planed down and whittled to a
blunt arrow point. Then she had drawn, gouged and carved the words three loon lake 7 miles. This was destined for a crossroad where there was now a bit of wood, faintly marked and askew. She had then shellacked the board and very fine it looked, just like the signs her father used to make at the lodge at Naguisheep. She had never done this before but she had watched her father doing it. Maggie was proud of this piece of work, and indeed it looked very nice and would give style – and confidence, too – to the approach. We need another one to encourage people on the fifteen-mile stretch, she thought, and one as you turn off the road to Lac le Jeune, and then, perhaps the word lodge or office. She gave Alan the small set of tools which she had bought, and some more bits of wood to practice on; but it was Haldar who, sitting in comfort, took over the sign making with almost absurd delight. He became much better at carving wooden signs than Maggie. He then carved other signs and sold them to other people in the district.

Then a pleasant thing happened which turned out to be unfortunate. This arose from an incident which had occurred some months before.

There had been a short and bad break in the weather at the lake. The lake had become slate-colored and threatening; rain poured down; then strong wind arose and made casting impossible; those four days were almost time and money wasted for fishermen who either pulled out and left, or stayed for one more day hoping for fine weather again, or went on the lake regardless; but fishing was not good.

In one of the cabins at this time was a man by the name of R. B. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham was an American and might be said to come from Santa Barbara. Or he might be said to come from Texas where he was raised, or from Mexico where he had interests, or from the Porcupine, or from New York
where he certainly had interests, or from northern Quebec; interests took him to Europe also. He was a small thin beige man, with a beige face and beige clothes. His cigars were pale in color. He spoke little, and communications around the stove in the evening appeared to flow above and around him but did not. Each fisherman waited impatiently for another fisherman to finish his tale (whose termination seemed slow but was inevitable) in order to begin a tale of his own. These tales gave inordinate pleasure to the tellers. Tales often collided in mid-air. What annual joy each story celebrated for its owner. His story welled up and burst “That reminds me up at Canim one time …” These sessions did not bore Mr. Cunningham. He enjoyed them, smoking his cigars and saying nothing. It might not be noticed at what moment Mr. Cunningham’s chair became empty. No one saw him go. He was a very unnoticeable man. In his dealings with the lodge people he was pleasant and almost grateful to Haldar, Vera, or Maggie for any inquiry as to his comfort or for any assistance that they might offer; he made few demands and did not need much assistance. The minute his boat was ready he got in nimbly, moved away competently, and could soon be seen in the middle distance, contemplative, casting a fly. Anyone asking Haldar how old Mr. Cunningham was would be told “Old … well … hard to say … might be all of sixty … maybe more … hard to tell.” Mr. Cunningham was seventy-five. Great would have been the surprise at the lodge if it had been disclosed that at the name of Mr. Cunningham many people in various parts of the world became apprehensive. It was probable that Mr. Cunningham who had a nice fishing lodge of his own in Oregon and one in the Adirondacks found the utmost pleasure and restoration in going, in his beige fashion, up to British Columbia – to Tweedsmuir Park, to Fort
St. James, to Three Loon Lake, unknown, unsung. Anyway that was what he did when he could. He stayed on, day after day in the bad weather, hoping for a break and actually going out on the lake. Skies continued gray and promised no relief, although at the end of four days the lake and sky suddenly blossomed without warning into innocent beauty and shone with calm, deceitful as a witch.

Haldar noted and commented to Vera upon the fearlessness of Mr. Cunningham whom he called that old fella. One afternoon Mr. Cunningham, indifferent to opposition from man, market, or weather, set out up the lake. Fishing might be good because the wind had dropped, the rain held off and – according to his private system – the time was right. So, out he went, the only one on the lake.

There is a
mystique
in fishing which only the fly-fisherman (a dedicated sort of person, or besotted) knows anything about. All fly-fishermen are bound closely together by the strong desire to be apart, solitary upon the lake, the stream. A fisherman has not proceeded far up the lake, not out of sight of the lodge, before he becomes one with the aqueous world of the lake, of a sky remarkable for change, of wind which (deriving from the changeful sky) rises or falls, disturbing the water, dictating the direction of his cast, and doing something favorable or unfavorable to the fish. He is sometimes aware of the extraordinary beauty, majesty, of the clouds, white or angry, which roll up in that weather breeder, that sky not far above, which caps the lake and him. Rain rushes down upon him, but something within him murmurs It will soon be over, and sometimes it is soon over. His eyes, occupied with this business of casting advantageously and making contact with a streak of living protesting silver in the water, are sometimes raised to the shore; and there he sees, in the early springtime,
a group of aspen trees standing slender, white-bodied, like dancing girls, poised as if to move away, and beginning to be dressed about their slender arms and shoulders in a timid unearthly green. They are virginal. On the lower slopes from which he has come, the aspen leaves are already out and have assumed a mere green and their lifelong occupation of trembling. But here, on the upper heights, these infinitesimal leaves are yet too small to shiver. They dress the white aspen trees, and the fisherman’s eyes, passing rapidly along the slopes above the shore, see also large masses of this ethereal green where an aspen grove stands against the dark coarse magnificence of lodgepole green or spruce. It is a matter of light falling, how green or not green the forests can be. He does not look too long (for he is fishing) but the green and the greens, the blue, the somber, the white, the deceptive glamour of the lake surface enter into this
mystique
of fishing and enhance it, and they enter into him too, because he is part of it. There is no past, no future, only the now. Mr. Cunningham has neither wife, mistress, child, rival, profit nor loss. He is casting into his favorite place by the reeds where he picked up three beauties on Wednesday (was it Wednesday?). He did very well, and experienced this inner rapture which should have been past, forgotten, as irretrievable one would say at the age of seventy-five as intense sexual joy. But no. It is unique and was his. Other fishermen had lurched down to the float and re-examined the sky and had said it didn’t look so good and they weren’t going to get another wetting like this morning and how about a game of bridge, and not for me, I’m going to have a nap, good day for a nap, might join you later.