Three Views of Crystal Water (7 page)

But Vera did not think of Belle. She did not, she believed, miss her mother. She could see past her mother now. Where once Belle had loomed, billowy and anxious-eyed, in the doorway between childhood and real life, now there was an absence, an exhilaration. The passageway was visible. Every day after school she parted from her schoolmates at the gate. She ran past the
boys for the streetcar along Granville. On the boisterous streets of Gastown, still running, she neatly dodged little gangs of sailors and men with carpets braced over their shoulders and policemen who might ask her why she was at large. It was cold and the rain penetrated her coat; the sleeves were too short because she was growing so fast. The sky was glowering with low clouds; at the edge of the water in the reflected neon lights, red and green, bark and kelp floated on oily smears. She breathed in the air through her nostrils and felt free.

It would be twilight as she climbed the stairs on Homer Street. Through the fogged glass of the window in the upper half of the door she could see the green shade of Miss Hinchcliffe’s desk lamp. She tossed down her bag of books on the chair with the curved wooden arms and bade an offhand hello to Miss Hinchcliffe. Miss Hinchcliffe might have been about to leave for the night, but now that Vera had arrived she’d stay on. And from down the hall came the dry roll of her grandfather’s voice. ‘Is that you, Vera?’

‘It’s me all right!’ She shed the wet coat and hoisted it to the coat tree, and sitting in the captain’s chair, prised off her Oxfords one by one. In her sock feet she slid on the green linoleum to his door and peeked in. Her grandfather’s long narrow jaw seemed to hang a little nearer the blotter, as the curve in his spine deepened.

‘Hello, dear.’ He put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. He wavered halfway up, and then, with an extra push, stood.

She kissed his cheek. He smelled sweeter now. Like an old thing. It was death approaching, or maybe all the fish Keiko fed him. He smelled like a grandfather, not a sea captain. Of clean cotton and sweet tobacco and only a hint of the ocean.

‘Just let me deal with Miss Hinchcliffe and I’ll be back,’ Vera said.

Her presence at Lowinger and McBean had changed from being that of a visitor and a child to that of a watcher, and a keeper. Vera had adopted a bustle, as if she actually had jobs to
do in the office. She stood in front of Hinchcliffe’s desk. ‘Did the shipment come in? Did he meet the man from Birks?’ She wanted to make sure that these visitors conveyed their needs to him, and not to the secretary.

Miss Hinchcliffe faced Vera with an ironic twist to her mouth. She protected the old man, but he refused to be endangered. Her expression said that Vera was a child and childhood was a phase; it would end, and she would go on to another passion, while she, Hinchcliffe would remain permanently on guard at her desk.

While Vera stood wishing she could get rid of Hinchcliffe. The secretary was like a foreign power. Her grandfather would find this ridiculous, of course. If she complained he would only chuckle; he would never say a word against anyone. He said the office couldn’t be run without her. Hinchcliffe sometimes complained of Vera as well.

‘She doesn’t need to come here day after day,’ the older woman said. ‘She’s taking up a great deal of our time.’

And James chuckled over that, too.

‘Did he have lunch?’ Vera asked.

‘He won’t eat the sandwiches,’ said Miss Hinchcliffe. The sandwiches came around every day from a man with a cart; they’d been coming to everyone in the block for years. ‘That Japanese housekeeper has got him used to noodles. That’s all he wants.’

Vera bridled. Keiko was Vera’s to insult, not Miss Hinchcliffe’s.

‘She is not the housekeeper,’ Vera said.

‘What is she then?’ said Miss Hinchcliffe daringly.

Vera ostentatiously let her jaw drop open. You dare to ask?

‘Does she not cook the meals?’ Implied was, such as they are. A long pointed stare at Vera’s concave midriff.

‘Yes,’ said Vera. ‘She doesn’t actually cook much. Mostly we eat raw fish.’ She said this to annoy.

Miss Hinchcliffe rolled her eyes. ‘It isn’t my place –’ she began, but Vera could see that she did think it was her place.

‘I don’t think that –’ Vera flipped her plank of long, thin, blonde hair.

No one finished what they began to say.

Vera retreated to the table where the woodcut prints were kept. Someone had put out a set of three. She wondered if her grandfather had been looking at them. Or if he had left them there for her to look at.

‘Did you see those?’ he said, appearing at the door of his office, poking his head in, his large sinking head with the handlebar moustaches still hoisted to the horizontal. ‘Quite lovely. You can spend plenty of time lost in there.’ Idly, as if it didn’t really matter, he turned away.

The three prints had been enclosed in a folder, which lay beside them. On the front of the folder was written, in fading blue ink, in a hand that Vera did not recognise,
Three Views of Crystal Water.

James disappeared back into his office, telling her they’d go for coffee in a few minutes, and she was left alone with the pictures.

The first view was of a seashore, seen from the top of a dune, as if an observer were crouched there unseen. Near the edge of the water was a circle of women, standing and sitting. They had built a small fire and it was this that drew them together, as if they were warming themselves. They did not huddle and shiver, but stood, tall, and elegant, revelling in their beauty. The women wore only a loose fabric draped over their hips, leaving belly and breasts bare. They were wet, hair dripping down their bare backs. Around their feet were baskets.

It was strange to name this a view of water, because the women were the interesting part, an even dozen of them, with their gently curved arms and their modesty, which she could feel, despite their nakedness. There was a child with them. The child had a small string bag of shells in her hand and a little threepronged rake. The child’s clothing matched the women’s red underrobes. They had all covered their heads with a white kerchief with blue leaves. They had been in the water and had come out, and these baskets held their catch, perhaps seashells, or fish, although Vera could see no means of catching fish in the picture.

Yet, she realised, as she continued to look, more than half the picture was water. It was flat and turquoise close in, and, where rocks stood up from the surface, transparent: you could see through to the base of the rocks beneath. But out from this shore, the sea reached from one side of the paper to the other and up to a flat horizon. There were waves drawn on it, hard white lines marching relentlessly one after another. The sea was not easy for the small boats that dotted it.

She put the print aside. In the second print the crystal water was black and without waves. The sky was dark, but Vera guessed it was nearly dawn. There were stars, like pricks of white; the artist had copied these stars into asterisks of white in the water as well. Two people, their faces hidden in travelling robes that half covered kimonos of orange and peacock blue, were on a graceful, arched bridge that crossed a stream of water. Drawn together by equal forces from opposite sides to the highest point of the arch, they seemed to tremble there. They were not facing, but back to back: each had walked a few steps past the other, as if they had tried to pass by, but could not. There was danger in the air, and yearning. The woman reached back, a long tapered hand emerging from her robe; she handed the man a letter.

Vera gazed long and hard at this one. It was a very satisfying picture, with the deep black and the royal blue, and the orange patterns of both the kimonos, and the white letter changing hands. Whatever secret was here was successfully passed; she felt relief.

She lifted that print and put it to the side, revealing the last of the three.

In the third view, there had been a catastrophe. It was snowing and the ground was white. But on the horizon, far back in the picture, a pagoda was in flames, turning the sky orange. A road wound through skeletal trees from the gates of that pagoda down to the centre bottom of the picture, and on that road were two hooded women. One was on horseback; the other stood beside her. They wore black and white cloaks with pointed black hoods that draped over the sides of their faces, half concealing them. The mounted woman held a long spear with a curved blade. Vera
understood that she would journey through danger, and must protect herself and her younger charge. Behind them, outside the pagoda gate, was a fearsome warrior in laced armour, brandishing his sword. He was their scourge, or their protector. His skirts flew up revealing thick legs in sandals, and the scabbard from his curved sword.

At first Vera didn’t see the crystal water. But there, under the snow-laden branch of a tree was a stream. Unfrozen, the water bubbled over rocks. Aside from the roaring of the flames it would be the only sound. The women would follow its path to safety.

Vera wondered who had named these ‘Three Views of Crystal Water’. The pictures belonged together, and therefore they must tell a story. But it was not clear where the story began.

She stared at the three prints, making up a story that would put them in order. Twelve women went to the seashore to fish and were seen by a stranger. The stranger fell in love with one of the women; but she was promised, or bound. Her trusted servant met him in the dead of night and gave him a letter telling him to go away, that all was lost. However, he would not go away. Instead he set fire to the pagoda and killed everyone in it except the woman and her servant, who escaped, while he watched over the destruction he had wrought.

‘Ready!’ called James.

That day, they made their way down the few steps, next door to the flatiron building where Roberta presided, the Captain stepping gallantly but perhaps a little more slowly than the season before. Vera could see Roberta turn to warn the waiting others. Because by now it was known on Homer Street that the old merchant would come in. And he had an audience. There was the hatter, and a printer with inky hands, and another few traders, in rugs and fabrics. There was Kemp who also traded with Japan, and sometimes his son. There was Malcolm the mailman, if he’d finished his run. Vera and James nodded to the gathered audience, and went to their booth. Roberta’s fierce hand with her
damp cloth swept across the table; they watched her midriff at eye level against the tabletop and heard her voice asking what they would have.

‘The usual,’ James said. And then exclaimed ‘Wet!’ with fresh surprise, as if it had never been wet before. ‘Wet today, Roberta.’ He surveyed the other coffee drinkers, now studying their napkins or gazing out of one window or the other to one street or the other. ‘Quite a crowd here today! Afternoon, Kemp.’

‘If it isn’t Lowinger, of Lowinger and McBean,’ said Kemp. ‘Where’s that son-in-law of yours? I heard he was in Madagascar. No, it was Marrakesh.’

They slid into their chairs. Vera was conscious that they made an odd pair, the old man and the girl.

‘I don’t know,’ said her grandfather. ‘He hasn’t been home for some time. Since …’ his voice trailed off. He always stopped talking when Belle or Hamilton Drew came to his mind. Soon after their marriage, they had moved here. Drew had been given the task of keeping the portside office open. The idea was to branch out from pearls. Canadian Pacific had plenty of steamships going to Japan and coming back with imported goods. Smart merchants bought them and divided them up and put them in new packages and sent them on. It was not easy to lose. But Hamilton …

Vera tried to picture her father. Was he part of her distant childhood? It seemed to her there had been a pram, and a sweet tooth for toffee. ‘I turned around and he was absent.’ That’s what her grandfather said about his own father. She remembered her mother crying.

This time James kept talking. ‘The trouble with my son-inlaw,’ he said dramatically. He knew he had an audience. ‘The trouble is he was too late.’

‘Too late for what?’

‘Just too late. For everything. He’s an imitator. Never had a thought of his own. Never could go his own way. Like the real people do.’ He sputtered to a stand still. Then he started again. ‘The trouble with your father was he was Scottish.’

Vera laughed at that one. Just one more reason her grandfather gave for not liking him.

He peered at Vera. ‘You’re thin, you’re pale, too, young lady. Are you eating properly? You know Keiko makes very good meals.’

Vera smiled primly.

‘You don’t want to be sickly.’

Unspoken words to follow were ‘like your mother’.

She was branching out too, from white food. She ate the cinnamon toast: the sugar and bread were white at least.

He laughed his pebbly laugh, the one she had come to love, the one of true mirth – as opposed to the other, hollow draining that was not a laugh but a view of the world.

He sipped his coffee. He had developed a tremor, and it spilled in the saucer. ‘You’re not going to try to get me to talk about pearls today.’

‘Everybody’s here and waiting.’

‘Nonsense. They’re here to have their coffee.’

James Lowinger liked to go out with the pearl divers, to see the stone go overboard and the men stand on it and let it carry them down to the bottom, like the lifts in the flat in London. They swarmed across the sea bed all arms and legs, as if they could stay down for ever. He wished he could do it. The rest of it he hated.

It was six years after his first visit, and the British had again announced that there would be a great harvest. His father got bidding for the rights to the oysters, and up went the price and down went the sun and suddenly it was his. He bought it all. The boats returned with hundreds of thousands of oysters, one in a thousand of which might have a
pearl. The overseers slung the bags out of the boats and onto the sand.

Now, what to do? Papa Lowinger could hire the natives to open the shells. But then he still needed men to search for pearls. The larger pearls would be hidden in the hinge of the oyster. To remove such a pearl you’ve got to use bare hands and a special prising, cutting tool. So he had to trust some workers. And there were none he trusted. He could chain them and forbid them to chew their blasted betel nut because they would hide any pearls they found in their teeth, and punish them if they did. But he didn’t want the bother, or the brutality of it.