The Stone Angel (16 page)

“I never asked for nothing free. You got no call to speak to me like that. I only asked about the stale doughnuts, for Chris’ sake. I’d of paid for them, but not the fancy prices you’re asking for them fresh ones.”

Then the clerk’s voice, lowered, to the manager.

“It’s the lemon extract he’s after, really, Mr. Cooper. The constable said we weren’t to sell any more if we thought—you remember? Charlie Bean’s waiting outside—I saw him. They get three times the price for it, from the Indians, for drinking.”

The manager was almost inarticulate with embarrassment. “All right, all right—give him the doughnuts and one bottle of extract, for goodness’ sake. We can’t refuse to sell one, can we? But don’t make it any more, or we’ll be in dutch. Oh Lord, I wish we didn’t have this sort of thing—”

He didn’t know how he could return and speak to me. I saved him the bother. Nothing mattered to me then, for I knew at last what must be done, and in the knowing there was a kind of relief. I stepped out into the open and walked down the center aisle of the store, moving slow and firm in buckled galoshes, my head up high, not looking around at all. When I reached Bram, I saw how old he’d grown. His mouth opened when he saw me, and all I remember noticing was that his teeth had developed brown ridges at the front.

We walked out of the store together, down the steps, past wrinkled Charlie Bean, gaping and shivering in his vigil, and that was the last time we ever walked anywhere together, Brampton Shipley and myself.

Each venture and launching is impossible until it becomes necessary, and then there’s a way, and it doesn’t do to be too fussy about the means. I had my mother’s
opal earrings, as well as the sterling silver candelabra and the Limoges dishes, a dinner set for twelve, with the platters and tureens, patterned so delicately in mauve violets and edged with gold. I’d never had occasion to use those dishes. Even at Christmas, I thought they’d be wasted on Bram and his daughters with their silent husbands and runny-nosed young.

You hear of people selling family things and being mortified, as though it meant disgrace. I didn’t look at it that way at all. Lottie was overdressed that day, I need hardly say, in rose and cream chiffon, but I was prepared. I wore the black silk dress I’d bought for my father’s funeral, which I didn’t attend, having discovered the day before the terms of his will and being too put out to go. Even so, I may have looked less fashionable than Lottie that afternoon in her cushioned sitting-room, so stuffed with lace doilies, cerise plush sofa, laden knick-knack cupboard. But I was past caring. My only thought was that she could count herself lucky to get the Currie things so reasonably. We sipped at tea together like two old friends. Her cups were that poor bone china that you buy for half a dollar apiece.

As we finished tea, Lottie smiled insinuatingly.

“Why sell them now, Hagar? You’re not taking a trip or anything, are you?”

Placidly, I denied. Then I took Telford Simmons’s hard-earned cash and did just that.

    “Mother—come on.”

A voice, and a hand shaking my shoulder. Startled, I draw away.

“Eh? Eh? What is it?”

“It’s time,” Doris says, with forced patience. “Come on, now.”

“Mercy, it can’t be time to get up yet, can it?”

“To get up!” she whinnies. “It’s dinner time, not morning.”

“Of course,” I come back at her quickly. “I’m well aware of that. I only meant—”

“You must have dozed,” she says. “It’ll do you good.”

“I never did. I was wide awake.”

“It must have relaxed you, talking with Mr. Troy. That’s fine. I thought it would.”

“With mister who?”

“Oh Lord. Never mind. Come on, now. Marv’s waiting. The meat loaf will be stone cold.”

After we’ve eaten, Doris announces she’s going to the corner store for ginger ale.

“I’ll come along.” Suddenly I feel the need to stretch my legs and get a breath of air.

“Well—” She seems doubtful. “If you feel up to it—”

“Of course I do. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, all right. I thought you’d stay and talk to Marv.”

She brings me my summer coat—a black grosgrain, loose-fitting and cool, yet just enough to keep the evening chill away. I feel comfortable and smart in it. Even Doris likes this coat. She takes my arm, quite needlessly, and off we go. I haven’t been for a walk in ages. This evening I feel sprightly. I step out with a will, sniffing the air, which is light and sweet with a hay perfume, for everyone on the block has been out cutting the lawns today.

At the corner store a young girl is paying for a loaf of bread. She counts the money carefully. She’s scarcely more than a child. I’m fascinated by her hands.

“Well, I never. Do you see her, Doris? She’s wearing black nail polish. Black with specks of gilt. Really, I ask you—what’s her mother thinking of, to allow it?”

The child turns and stares malevolently, and I see from her face that she’s considerably older than I thought.

“Oh, Mother—” Doris breathes into my ear. “Can’t you hush? Please, just for once—”

How has it happened? I can’t face Doris or the black-fingered girl or anyone. Oh, I’ll speak no more, ever, to a living soul. Until my last breath I’ll hold my wayward tongue. I won’t, though—that’s the trouble.

We blunder home, I holding to Doris’s arm, fearing to fall. In the living-room, Marvin is walking to and fro like a pacing bear in some zoo pit. He has that look of difficult concentration which he wears when he’s forced to deal with something he’d rather procrastinate about. He hesitates as though he’s been rehearsing in our absence and has now clean forgotten his speech. Finally his voice blurts in my direction.

“It’s all arranged. The nursing home. I’ve booked you in. You’re to go a week from today.”

“ARE YOU SURE
you wouldn’t like a Seconal?” Doris inquires.

From my soft web of sheets and pillows, I shake my head. “No thanks. I’ll sleep.”

This is a lie. I’ll not sleep a wink tonight. Sleep is the last thing I want. I have to think. They’re greatly mistaken if they think I’ll bend meekly and never raise a finger. I’ve taken matters into my own hands before, and can again, if need be. I’ll have a word or two to say, you can depend on that, before my mouth is stopped with dark.

Revelations are saved for times of actual need, and now one comes to me. I can recall a quiet place, I think, and not so very far from here. Didn’t we go there for a picnic? Was it this year? Now, if the name will only come to me. The name is necessary, essential. For the ticket.

Point Something. Was it? What’s the Point? Like a plague of blackflies, the phrases buzz and mock me. Then it comes. Shadow Point. So named because the cliffs at noon cast shadows on the sea.

Marvin looks after my money. The account’s in his name now. I had forgotten. I haven’t a nickel. I’m stumped
once more, but only for an instant. How well I’m thinking tonight. Ideas come thick and fast. The old-age pension check, of course. I’m sure I saw the envelope on the den desk today. I haven’t signed this month’s, I’m almost certain of that. Normally I sign them and Marvin takes them to the bank. It’s not a great sum, goodness knows, but it would do. If only it’s still there. Dare I rise and look? Tiptoe downstairs? Yes, and trip, more than likely, tumble and break my neck, rouse Marvin and Doris like scared ducks from a swamp. No, that wouldn’t do. I’ll wait. When morning comes, I must be light-spoken, sly and easy, never letting on. Excitement burns through my arteries, making me wakeful just when I want to sleep.

    I packed our things, John’s and mine, in perfect outward calm, putting them in the black trunk that still bore the name
Miss H. Currie
. John, twelve, watched.

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I’ll tell him,” I said, “when he comes in.”

“Maybe we should just go and not say,” John said.

“I’m not sneaking off, don’t ever worry. I don’t have to.”

“It’ll be kind of funny,” John said, “leaving.”

“It’s for you,” I cried. “For your sake. Don’t you know that?”

“Yeh, sure, I guess so,” he replied.

I told him to help me, not simply stand there.

“Where’s the plaid-pin, John? It’s not in your dresser drawer.”

“How should I know?” he said sulkily. “It must be here somewheres.”

“Somewhere,”
I told him.
“Somewheres
isn’t a word.”

I looked and looked, but couldn’t find it.

“Are we going to live with Marvin at the coast?” John asked.

“No. Well find a place of our own. I’ll have to get a job. I could be someone’s housekeeper.”

Then I laughed, and he looked at me, frowning.

“Like Auntie Doll,” I said. “That seems peculiar. You never know what’s going to happen to you in this life. Well, I’ll not be like her, really. She was all alone. I’ll have a man in the house.”

“Who?” he asked, his voice rising. “Who?”

I put an arm around his shoulder. “You. You’ll be a help, I know. Well manage.”

He gave me the same look he’d given Bram that time the honeyed knife was thrust into his mouth. His face was still as stagnant water, and his eyes, those live eyes bright and watchful as a bird’s, were shrouded against my glance.

He’d never been away from Manawaka. No wonder he was nervous at the thought of it. He’d be all right, I felt sure, once we were on the train.

In the kitchen we had an old Windsor chair beside the stove, with half its rungs out and one leg tipsy. Bram sat there and swayed back and forth as I told him. He didn’t seem surprised. He never even asked me to stay or showed a sign of caring about the matter one way or another.

“When do you plan on going?” he said at last.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“If I was you,” Bram said, “I’d hard-boil a few eggs
and take them along. I’ve heard the meals are high on the trains.”

“I wouldn’t take eggs onto a train,” I said. “They’d think we were hicks.”

That would be an everlasting shame, wouldn’t it?” he said.

That’s all you’ve got to say?” I cried. “Food, for heaven’s sake?”

Bram looked at me. “I got nothing to say, Hagar. It’s you that’s done the saying. Well, if you’re going, go.”

And so we did.

Winter was the right time to go. A bell-voice, clear in the cold air, cried “All aboard!” and the train stirred and shook itself like a drowsy dragon and began to move, regally slow, then faster until it was spinning down the shining tracks. We passed the shacks and shanties that clustered around the station, and the railway buildings and water tower painted their dried-blood red. Then we were away from Manawaka. It came as a shock to me, how small the town was, and how short a time it took to leave it, as we measure time.

Into the white Wachakwa valley then, past the dump grounds and the cemetery on the hill. Peering, I could see on the hill brow the marble angel, sightlessly guarding the gardens of snow, the empty places and the deep-lying dead.

Many a mile, manyamile, manyamile
, said the iron clank of the train wheels, and we perched, as unaccustomed travelers do, on the edges of the dusty green plush seats and looked out the rattling windows at the winter. The farms were lost and smothered. Emaciated trunks of maple and poplar were black now and the branches were feathered with frost. The sloughs were
frozen over, and the snow was banked high against the snow-fences and shadowed blue in the sun. Everything was blue-bleak and white for distances, until we came to some little whistle-stop where bundled children with scarves up to their noses pranced on the slippery platform and brushed pink bubbles of ice and wool from their red-mittened fists, and the breath of barking dogs gushed white and visible into the dry air snapping with cold.

“You want to know something?” John eyed me cautiously. “I lost the pin.”

“Lost it!”

He saw from my face that this was probably worse to me than what had really happened.

“Well, I didn’t exactly lose it,” he hedged. Then, in a burst, daring me to rage. “I traded it to another guy for a jackknife.”

I could have cried. Yet, thinking of the Limoges, I couldn’t help but wonder if the knife wouldn’t be more use to him, after all.

    I must have slept last night, although I was sure I wouldn’t, for here’s the morning. I know I intended doing something, but I can’t think what it could have been. Tell Marvin I won’t countenance his selling of the house? That must have been it. No. The cold memory comes. It’s gone beyond the disposing of the house. It’s me they’re trying to palm off now.

Then I recall my plan. Snugly I lie and taste it pleasurably. But the thought is simpler than the deed. I rise and try to dress, and find my stupid fingers are all thumbs today. I’m upset this morning. I have that miserable bile taste in my mouth, and under my ribs I feel the
pain beginning to nag. Perhaps if I take an aspirin, I’ll be fine.

Doris helps me to dress, and while she’s getting my breakfast I go to the den. The check’s still there in its brown envelope. Quickly, I snatch it, feeling like a thief, although it’s mine by rights. I stuff it into my dress front, hoping the crumpled paper won’t rustle. A piece of luck—today’s her day to shop.