The Age of Water Lilies (28 page)

“I wanted to cry many times throughout,” said Elizabeth Washburn, who was a member of the Chorus and one of the sisters who had first expressed concern about the thrust of the project (her sister, Mary Styles, was playing a soldier). “Every time Hecuba spoke, it tugged at my heart. The words felt so timely and so personal. And of course your Andromache, Flora—I can tell you've been working on your part already. You read the lines as though they came from somewhere deep inside you, with such a clear and steady voice. Your performance is something to aspire to, my dear.”

Flora blushed. “Well, yes, Ann and I have practised a little. I needed convincing that it wasn't beyond me.”

Ann told the group that she had some ideas for blocking that she would try to work out before the next time they met. And could they arrange, if possible, to get together in small groups to work on the script together? Poseidon and Pallas Athena? Menelaus and Helen? She and Flora would rehearse together in the evenings and would welcome others—Cassandra, for instance—to drop by as was convenient. She told them again how pleased she was with their work thus far.

Robert Alexander was waiting for Flora and Ann in his car. He had taken Grace on an outing for the afternoon. The child was animated, having had the attention of a doting grandfather as well as a sumptuous tea with cream wafers, a current favourite treat.

“The thespians return! How did it go, ladies?” asked Robert as he helped them into their seats.

“It was excellent, Robert,” Ann replied. “For a first reading, I think we did very well indeed. They are keen, the women, and I think we might be able to do this old play a kind of modern justice.”

TWENTY-SIX

1962

When school started again, it seemed too soon. The days in Miss Oakden's garden had been lovely. Tessa hadn't wanted to take the money that the woman pressed into her hands each week, but Miss Oakden insisted.

“Oh, yes, my dear! You've worked hard. I could never have trained the honeysuckle so well myself and you've been a godsend when it comes to the fruit. And see how tidy the borders are! My knees no longer like to bend, Tessa, the way they used to, so weeding has become a trial, I'm afraid. You have been a willing and cheerful helper and you deserve this.”

Tessa had never heard the term
godsend
before and she cherished it. To think of herself as special to someone, to have helped someone's knees—it felt like an honour.

She was no longer in the Annex. Grade threes went to the big building. At first Tessa worried that she might not be able to find her classroom—there were so many doors!—but after a week, she was confident. In any case, when the bell rang each morning, her class lined up outside like all the other classes. They were led to their classroom by Miss Anstey. Tessa didn't like her as much as she had liked Mrs. Barrett. She was very brisk and efficient, giving directions or instructions once, expressing impatience with those children who didn't catch on the first time. Luckily Tessa was a quick learner, but she felt a little pang of anxiety when she realized that someone else needed more help and Miss Anstey got the look on her face that indicated she was not happy to have to say things twice. Or three times, even.

Mrs. Barrett had encouraged Tessa to pursue her own reading interests after discovering that she was a fluent reader of novels and other books, saying, “You must participate when we do things as a class but for the quiet reading, I see no point in you having to work on the Readers. Dick and Jane are perhaps not quite as interesting as Nancy Drew!”

“Oh, and Cherry Ames!”

Mrs. Barrett had given her the paper for the map and allowed her time in the school library to look up information on map-makers. Even though Tessa was no longer in her class, she sought her out to find out how the map was progressing.

“You may keep that atlas as long as you like, Tessa. We have plenty in the classroom and I'm glad to know that you find it so useful.”

But Miss Anstey said she did not want a student who was not a part of every classroom activity, so Tessa was required to do all the assignments on
Streets and Roads
. When the class went to the library on Thursday afternoons, she had to choose her book for the week from the stack the librarian had put on a table for the grade threes. Most of them she had already read; the ones she hadn't seemed very dull. There were several Bobbsey Twins stories, for example. Tessa tried one, involving a trip to the beach; but the two sets of twins were boring and their ideas of fun too lame. The book was a lot like those previous Readers in which Dick, Jane, their little sister Sally, the dog Spot, and the cat Puff had adventured confined to things that might happen in one or two syllables. When the class read the chapters aloud in the earlier grades, Tessa had felt she would burst with impatience as some of her classmates sounded out each word, each sentence, one syllable at a time. Not that she was cross with the kids themselves, but she wanted to be reading something herself, something that grabbed her attention the way a good Nancy Drew could do, taking her away with the girl detective as she drove her smart car off on adventures involving mistaken identity, kidnapping, sinister dealings on ranches and golf courses.

She dawdled on her way home those September days, her lunch box swinging in one hand, her tartan schoolbag in the other. She didn't feel like riding her bike with the others. Walking, she could think her own thoughts. She could look closely at houses and the store at the corner of May and Moss, figuring out which ones she needed to include on her map. If she walked over the Moss Rocks on the trail, she could pause and look behind her to Juan de Fuca Strait shimmering in the morning sunlight, a few freighters far out in the blue water. And it was an easy thing to stop and make a quick note in her little book, fishing it out of the pouch on the front of her schoolbag when she had a thought she wanted to record or a view of the cemetery from the high point on the rocks.

One night, when she was lying in her bed, waiting for sleep, Tessa heard her parents talking in the living room. They were discussing Miss Oakden.

“There is some connection, I think, with the Alexander family. Someone mentioned a son who died and was the father of her child. A hard thing for her, to have been an unwed mother in those years. Even now it would be difficult.” This was Tessa's mother.

Her father's voice: “She has dignity, though, in spades. She told me once that she worked during the first war at a brick works, making tiles. And that she had been left the house by a friend who died just after the war. All those years in that house. What changes she'll have seen.”

“She was something of a suffragette, I've heard. A group of them performed a play that had the city talking! When you think of it, though, there must be many of these old-timers with stories to tell. Old men working in their gardens who probably fought in the Great War. The old Hungarian woman, Eva Gurack's mother . . . her husband was executed in the revolt, I understand. And yet we all live these domestic lives, raising our children, paying our taxes. I suppose what I really should be doing is sewing patches on the boys' jeans. I've never known children so hard on their clothes.”

Her father must've switched on the television then because Tessa couldn't hear their voices, just Jackie Gleason yelling at his friend Art and anyone else who got in his way.

Classroom activities centred on seasonal events. Bright turkeys were crowned with wattles made by tracing your hand onto brown construction paper and the straw cornucopia was filled with offerings from home—Tessa brought four bright apples from Miss Oakden's tree and some walnuts she found on her way to school. Then it was time to start thinking about Halloween. This involved long-term planning for costumes. Most children knew what they would wear a month ahead of the actual day. Most worked out a route well in advance that would include the houses known to be most generous. Word of these spread. There was one legendary address to which trick-or-treaters flocked each year for the ten-cent chocolate bars given to each child along with a bag containing a popcorn ball and a lollipop ghost, made by tying a Kleenex over the top part of the sucker and drawing on a scary face.

•  •  •

It was not as though her brother Mick had never had firecrackers. But this was the first year they were sold legally to minors, and he had spent his own savings on fifty firecrackers and a punkstick to light them. He'd been told to save them for Halloween night itself but couldn't resist lighting just one or two for the loud blast and the smell. He found it intoxicating!

Arriving home from school that day, excited about trick-or-treating that evening in her pirate costume (Teddy's striped T-shirt, an eyepatch of old black sock, a front tooth blacked out with special wax, and a big dotted handkerchief of her father's tied over her hair, one of her mother's hoop earring fastened to it), Tessa was idly walking up the path to the front porch when she heard Mick call out, “Watch this!” as he threw a lit firecracker up into the air. It exploded, causing Tessa's heart to catch briefly—she didn't like the noise or the smell. But then her brother suddenly shrieked, a horrifying sound, and he was down, he was screaming and rolling on the porch as the sound of many firecrackers exploding at once filled Tessa's ears. And her mother's too, for there she was at the front door, in a panic, shouting, “What's wrong, Mick? Oh, dear God, what's wrong?” Teddy was behind her and the two of them rushed to Mick, who was still bellowing and moaning. This was not Mick's voice, not the boy who shouted and yelled and only sometimes cried. This was guttural, like the sound animals made on the nature shows they sometimes watched on television. The smell was terrible—firecracker powder and something else, a burning meaty smell. Mick's trousers were smouldering, smoke rising from his legs as he moved in anguish, trying to stop the firecrackers that were still popping and flashing from his pockets.

“Run and ask the Godwins to call an ambulance. Quick, Tessa! Run!”

And she did, knocking wildly on the neighbours' door, gasping out her mother's request that they call for an ambulance. Mrs. Godwin ran to do that as Mr. Godwin rushed to her house to see if he might help.

“Roll him in the doormat!” he cried as he took the stairs two at a time. “Roll him in the mat and then bundle him tight. It will starve the fire.”

Mr. Godwin gently but quickly moved her brother's body onto the mat that her mother pulled from the doorway. Between the two of them, they managed to roll Mick up and then they embraced the bundle to extinguish the smouldering. Mick had stopped screaming and was lying white-faced inside his wrapping, small moans coming from his throat.

“He's in shock,” said Mrs. Godwin, who had come immediately after calling the ambulance. (She had been a nurse in her younger years, had nursed during the First World War; she had told the family this when they'd introduced themselves over the fence on the day they'd moved to Eberts Street.) “I hear the ambulance now, though. It won't be long. Can you hear me, Mick?” She was leaning down to the boy, trying to catch his eyes, which were full of darkness, staring off. He was far away. Tessa worried he'd gone too far away to ever come home to them.

“Do you have a drop of brandy, Katherine? I think he could do with a little.”

The elderly woman gently spooned a tiny bit of brandy into Mick's mouth. Most of it dribbled down his chin. But Tessa saw his throat gulp a little.

The sirens were close, closer, and then the ambulance men were bringing a stretcher to the porch and they were carefully lifting Mick from the mat. His trousers were in ashy shreds. They spoke to him quietly. One man began to take his blood pressure while the others removed his shoes and arranged his blackened legs on the white stretcher. The smell was awful, burned meat and sulphur. He was draped with a clean white sheet and a strap was fastened over his chest. A small crowd of neighbourhood children stood on the sidewalk, watching.

“Go with him, Katherine,” Mrs. Godwin was saying to Tessa's mother. “We will care for Tessa and Teddy. Don't worry about them. Your place is with Mick.”

Tessa and her brother went to the Godwins, where they sat at the kitchen table while Mrs. Godwin made them a drink of hot chocolate and put shortbread fingers on a plate for them. Then, remembering, she went to a cupboard and brought out small bags of chocolate-covered raisins, bought for trick-or-treaters. But they couldn't eat, couldn't take more than a sip or two of the chocolate.

“Will he die?” Tessa was finally asking the question that clutched at her heart like a claw.

Mrs. Godwin came to her and gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “No, my dear. I think he will be fine. From what I could see, the injury is to his legs. He will be in pain, yes, and probably there will be scarring, but I am quite sure he will be home in no time. It was a terrible thing, though. For him, and for the two of you who saw it.”

The phone rang and Mr. Godwin answered it. “Yes,” he said. Then, “Oh, good. That's good to know. Thank you, Katherine. We'll expect him when we see him then.”

•  •  •

It was the worst Halloween ever. Tessa's father came home from work, shaken by the phone call he had received from the hospital. He knocked on the Godwin door and gathered his children in his arms, patting their backs as they sobbed. He thanked his neighbours and assured them that yes, he would certainly call on them if he needed their help in the next little while. Then he helped his younger children into their costumes, insisting they go trick-or-treating, for Mick's sake as much as theirs.

“He will be disappointed, you know, if no one in this family gets a pillowcase of candy! And you can take him a share to the hospital. He'll be glad to get it in a few days.”

Trudging from door to door, a pirate and a skeleton, Tessa and her brother collected their bags of candy. The night was punctuated by the snap of firecrackers. Tessa thought she might be sick at the smell of them. She could not eat a single piece of her candy, not even the ten-cent Dairy Milk from the special house. When she went to bed, she lay awake for hours, thinking of Mick. Every time she tried to close her eyes, she heard his terrible screaming. The phone rang several times. Very late, she heard a car door slam and then footfall on the porch steps. She recognized her mother's voice, low and urgent, and she went out to the kitchen.