The Indifference of Tumbleweed (38 page)

‘I cannot say.' My flicker of defiance fizzled away. ‘It is such a big decision.'

At least she did not laugh, but it was plain she was exerting considerable self-control, as she took a deep breath – and then another.

‘Well, I dare say he will make his way well enough,' she said. Her indifference was more wounding that outright resistance would have been. Enthusiasm, of course, was more than I could possibly have hoped for. And yet Henry had been consistently pleasant to my family throughout the journey, showing himself to be intelligent, willing and good-hearted.

‘Do you not like him?' I challenged.

‘Charity – he is hardly bigger than a dwarf. Have you no self-respect?' It was said impatiently, as if I were being deliberately obtuse, in a tone I had come to expect from people more mature than myself. Indeed, my mother seemed to be stuck in it that day, where I was concerned.

‘But you would not oppose my marrying him?'

‘You are twenty years old. At your age I was on the way with my second child.'

And Hope Gordon was widowed with a young son; almost every woman in the train had landed a husband by the time she was eighteen. ‘Yes, Mother, I know,' I said, feeling my failure acutely. ‘You are telling me that the identity of such a husband is of secondary importance to the mere fact of his existence?'

‘You have begun to speak like him already. Take him, girl, and be thankful. I can see no serious impediment.'

‘I will, then,' I said. ‘You have helped me to decide, for which I am grateful.'

I had never regarded myself as a romantic. I had not read girlish stories since I was eleven, nor woven fantasies about a future garlanded with flowers provided by a devoted spouse. But I had a nagging sense that this reluctant decision as to my future was deficient in many ways. I ought at least to feel contented and
right
. Instead I was nervous and almost sad. The idea that I was losing something hovered just below the surface.

The whole wagon train was in a state of increasing chaos as buildings, fences, roads and livestock all came into view, spread in a wide arc ahead of us. Trees had been felled over a large area, making way for paddocks containing horses ands cattle. Wooden shacks with painted signs above the door announced offices, grocery stores, a mail room and a government post. Every family meeting the undemanding criteria
set by the authorities would be granted a square mile of land and the right to build a home. Questions over water, accessibility, finances all had to be addressed to the appropriate office, and a flood of men, most of them holding sheets of paper, swirled between the various buildings, while women and children held back, as if afraid of the sudden massive change to their routines.

I too held back. Henry was nowhere to be seen. There had been heavy rain overnight and the ground was turning to mud under so many feet and wheels. The train had been expected for a week and preparations for us had been made to an impressive degree, but still the soft valley soil could not withstand such an onslaught. It felt irrelevant to be worrying about a proposal of marriage when so much business was being conducted that would decree how and where all these hundreds of people would live, perhaps for the remainder of their lives. But then I reminded myself that precisely these matters would be decided by my reply to Henry, and that it was actually entirely fitting that it should be made on this important day.

Eventually, late in the afternoon, I found him. His small stature had made him harder to see than another man would have been, and in fact it was Mr Fields I detected first. As I automatically moved towards him, I saw that Henry was at his side. Ellie and her brother were also there, and it came to me that the little family was attempting to arrange a funeral for their wife and mother. The burial was badly overdue and any further loss of time would be to step over into the realm of shame and disgust.

Both men looked at me, and my heart gave a rushing sensation as if it were being swept down a cascading river. Ellie ran towards me and grabbed my hand.

Henry, with a little frown, reached out his own hand as if to brush away the child from a place that was rightfully his. I remained frozen in place, powerless to influence the unspoken contest.

‘Have you a reply for me?' he asked softly. But not softly enough. Not only Ellie, but her father, heard him.

I tried to nod. I wanted to say the words and get it done with. But my attention was fixed on the tableau created by the two men, and the stark differences between them. Not only the discrepancy in their height, but the way they both looked at me. Each one had removed his hat at my approach, in a synchronised move that was almost amusing. Henry was defensive, possessive, urgent. Mr Fields was alarmed, afraid, disbelieving. The similarity all lay in the fact that everything depended on me, for
them both. Every atom of their attention was directed at me and what I might say next.

And Ellie, too. She pressed her thin little body against mine and clung to my hand.

‘Henry…' I managed, aware that my duty to him was foremost. My mother had accused me of a lack of self-respect, but she was wrong. It was deeply important to me that I should not wound Henry Bricewood. How I might manage that, while at the same time following what I had suddenly perceived as my destiny, was far from clear.

‘Come and walk with me,' he urged. Again he gestured towards Ellie, plainly telling her to go away. I found myself tightening my hold on her, until I was clinging as desperately as she was.

‘Henry…Mr Bricewood,' I tried again, thinking foolishly that I ought not to use his Christian name to his face at such a moment. ‘I cannot. I believed I could. I was searching for you to agree to your proposal. Perhaps if I had found you an hour earlier, it would have been different.' I looked at Mr Fields, who was waiting with a quiet dignity as if perfectly reading my mind. ‘But I have remembered things I should never have forgotten. I am not the right mate for you, not at all. You would be unhappy with me and I would not have that on my conscience. Forgive me, please. But my answer can only be a refusal.'

Henry's embarrassment at having his rejection overheard by another man was perhaps the saving of him. He flushed red and replaced his hat. ‘I thank you,' he said stiffly. ‘It seems that destiny is against us. An hour ago I was with my father, learning details of a substantial acreage a few miles to the south-west, well supplied with water, and with a track already running within half a mile of the site designated for the erection of a house. I could not say for certain that I would shortly be a married man, but I was told that if I did possess a wife, I might have a similar homestead to myself, for a very low price.'

‘But you said you were to be a banker, living in town.'

My protest proved to be another saving grace. ‘Working, not living,' he corrected me. ‘But it matters not, now. I shall remain with my family for the foreseeable future.'

‘Then may God bless you,' I said, meaning it in all sincerity.

Henry had not grasped the full meaning of the words I used for my refusal. He did not suspect that my remark about remembering and forgetting centred upon the other man standing there, and his little step-daughter. Mr Fields himself appeared not to detect any particular import, either, and of course when I gathered my wits I
understood that he could scarcely be expected to interpret it as a proposal of marriage. Ellie, however, was quicker.

‘He wants to marry you?' she asked, her little voice piping shrilly. ‘And you told him no.'

‘Hush,' I told her. ‘You're too young to know about such things.'

‘I know them very well,' she argued. ‘It was the same when Pa married my Ma.'

Mr Fields was considerably less calm when I ventured a glance at him. Nobody said any more until Henry had taken himself off, walking stiffly into the crowd of excited migrants. ‘Marriage?' he said quietly.

‘Much to my surprise,' I confirmed. My certainty was leaking away under his gaze, and a warm embarrassment afflicted me, every bit as strongly as it had troubled Henry.

‘And you refused him?'

‘As you heard.'

‘Poor man. You could do very much worse than Henry Bricewood. He has a good head on his shoulders.'

I smiled at that. It was a platitude the like of which I seldom heard him utter. ‘I shall be sorry to lose his friendship,' I said, with a pang. Would I never see Henry again? Or if I did, would he be cold and distant? My smile disappeared. ‘Oh, it is all changing much too quickly. I feel as if we are in a dream. How can the journey be finished so
easily
?'

I had said something of the sort to him before, and he winced again now, as he did then. ‘Oh! Your wife,' I remembered with a wretched feeling of shame.

‘My wife has been universally forgotten,' he said. ‘And you could say, I suppose, that she died
easily,
compared to many. Now she must be buried, and that, I fear is far from easy. This new city boasts a cemetery, right enough, but no one can direct me to an official who might furnish permission and guidance for the procedure. They merely speak of ministers and priests who must be consulted.'

‘You would not proceed without benefit of religion?' Despite his assertion as to his lack of faith, this could surely not extend to such a serious moment. ‘You owe it to her children…' I faltered over the words, afraid of causing offence.

‘Perhaps I do, at that. Jane was a chapelgoer until she was widowed. Her children were all to have been baptised when they reached the appropriate age..' He sighed. ‘And such is the urgency of the matter, I cannot let scruple cause further delay.'

‘Were they not baptised as infants?' I wondered.

‘In the Baptist doctrine, an individual must have reached the age of reason before such a ceremony carries any meaning,' he said. ‘Or so my friend led me to understand. I would have carried out his wishes. Perhaps I still might.' He looked at the scrawny youngsters and sighed.

I pointed out a half-built church, with a wooden cross standing before it. ‘There is your objective,' I said.

‘Would you come with me?'

‘Of course.' There was a natural inevitability to it which only Ellie seemed to understand.

We found a minister inside the roofless church, directing three men in the positioning of a screen halfway down the body of the building. The scent of new-cut timber drowned everything. The screen, however, looked old – and beautiful.

‘Brought it by ship from Italy,' said the minister shortly, seeing my admiration. ‘Carved by craftsmen a century since.'

‘Italy? Then might you be a Roman?' I asked, eyeing his garb doubtfully. He wore a black shirt and cotton pants – in no way consistent with the cassock of the priests I had known in Boston and Providence.

‘Out of costume,' he smiled. ‘Father Benedict Forenzi, at your service.'

‘We have need of your services,' I said boldly. ‘My friend's wife died, six or seven days since, and needs burial immediately. Are we permitted to use the town cemetery?'

The man turned to Mr Fields, and for the rest of the conversation I was ignored. Ellie and I wandered outside, searching for Jimmy. The child was no more or less pale than usual, but her lip was unsteady and she would not speak to me. I glimpsed her fears and sympathised. ‘A new life,' I said. ‘We none of us knows what lies ahead of us now. But this land is good.' I waved an arm at the green hills, and sniffed at the air. Despite all the vaporous people and their stock, there was yet a scent of freshness. The ocean was not so distant and I fancied I could detect the sharp tang of it. On trees the leaves were showing their autumn shades, amongst the persisting green. There were others like me, simply standing and gazing around themselves, as if trying to imagine Oregon as their permanent home.

‘My poor mother,' Ellie whispered. ‘She was always so sad, and Mr Fields was only meaning to make her happy.'

There was much about Mrs Fields that I preferred not to contemplate. Primarily, the terrible fact that her husband had kicked her and caused her to abort their child, which still made me shiver.

‘Really?' I muttered.

‘She would not be cheered,' sighed the little girl.

Her stepfather found us then, and despite my attempt to change the subject, he seemed to know what we'd been saying. ‘I was a savage beast to her,' he admitted. He looked down at Ellie, still hanging onto my arm. ‘As the child will confirm.'

Ellie met his eyes with no sign of fear or accusation. ‘The devil was in you,' she agreed.

‘Have I ever kicked you or your brother?'

She shook her head emphatically. ‘Nor slapped us,' she said. ‘The devil is gone away now.'

I spoke up falteringly. ‘I heard her complaining, in your tent one night at Westport. She never wanted to make this journey, to be an emigrant. She was afraid of what might happen to her. She must have been very unhappy. Ellie tells me that she was.'

‘She would have been unhappy in any event,' he said dourly. ‘And yet she sincerely wished to marry me. The idea was hers. I did my poor best with her.'

I had nothing to say. His face seemed to fill my gaze, crowding out the busy scenes on all sides of us; his voice drowned the shouts of men and bawling of oxen and squealing of children. His eyes, the colour of new-shucked chestnuts, remained on my face for a long minute. His skin, weathered to a hue not far from that of his mother's people, was no long ugly with the smallpox scars. His bones were sharply visible along his jaw and cheek, his black hair alive-looking. Here was a man entirely different from all others I had met. I had known it from the start. Soft-footed, sharp-tempered, deeply-rooted – he was an archetype of a true American. He knew his land from the two sides, thanks to his parentage. Poor in money terms, encumbered with two young children, he had abilities I could still scarcely guess at.