Extensions (16 page)

As Butch turns toward the tavern, the coach driver commands his horses to proceed. Butch's eyes have no need to sweep the crowd now that everyone has noticed his chauffeur. His gaze does touch Jane for a second and she believes her transparent thoughts cause the big, crude man to halt in his swagger. But without a further glance at her, he announces to the congregation of muckers, drillers, diggers, drivers, shakers, chunkers, haulers, and rope riders: “Let's have a drink. I'll stand you a round for now, and next time I promise drinks for the whole night.” The miners cheer and shout, following Butch in to swill and swap crusty tales until one of them punches another in the face.

Spotting Gertie Salo coming from the store, Jane hurries off down the path home. The pokey girl would surely detain her with drawn-out stories of her aunts, uncles, and cousins, who are due to arrive soon from Finland and join those already here.

When she enters her back door, Tommy and Mama, both engrossed in their tasks, look up but say nothing. Mama has laid three chesterfield cushions onto a length of brown chintz to measure. Tommy planes the door frame of the opening he has just cut through the sitting room wall for the first new bedroom. It will be a small space when finished, barely enough for the bed and press he just bought from a miner leaving Wellington for San Francisco. But for the first time in her life, Jane will sleep alone. Thanks to Dr. MacRae, she has been assigned the room. On his last house call, Mama asked the doctor if she had consumption — almost hopefully, Jane thought, until she convinced herself she was mistaken — and he explained that her appearance was too healthy for tuberculosis. Her condition was still unidentifiable, he said, but it would be beneficial for her and Jane to sleep in separate beds. At these words Jane had to turn away to conceal her elation, taking special care not to look at her young brother, who thought
he
would be getting the new room. Until Tommy finishes the second room, the larger couch being recovered by Mama will accommodate Gomer's growing body more comfortably.

Jane often regrets that her older brother talks so little, but standing here now, peering through the gateway to freedom, she is proud of all the silent effort he has put into their home. All additions are made with dismantling in mind, but this impermanence has not caused her family to care less about their surroundings. Mama has even suggested hanging wallpaper when there is money enough after these improvements, and Jane has seen what she wants at the home of the fire boss when she delivered a peach pie Stella had forgotten: tiny interlocking chains of forget-me-nots. She is reminded how Mama liked beauty in the house back in Llantrisant — fresh flowers, wallpaper, and pastel-coloured walls. Whenever Papa called her house proud, he said it in a voice that showed he was Mama proud. Remembering what her mother has lost, Jane can sometimes understand her illness better.

“Mackie buggy was at the tavern,” she says, slowly hanging up her cape and putting on a clean starched apron.

Tommy continues planing without turning his head and Mama sits back on her knees to say: “Owner checking up on his employees?”

Jane takes a pot of ham and leek soup from the cool pantry shelves and sets it on the stove before arranging a pan with sausages for the oven. “Henry Hargraves got out.”

“Hargraves? Our meat man?” Tommy finally speaks.

“Louis Strong gives us our meat. He shares what he and Henry Hargraves hunt together.” Jane glances at her brother to make sure he understands the distinction. “I don't trust that man.”

Mama looks up sharply, leaving her finger to mark the spot she wants to cut. “For a young girl you have strong opinions. Has this man ever done anything to you?”

“It's Louis I worry about.” She mixes flour, baking powder, and sugar into a bowl using experienced hands as measuring vessels.

Tommy sets down his plane and ladles some cool water from the pail into a cup. “You're too concerned about Louis. He manages fine.” He stands next to his sister as she adds an egg and milk to the biscuit dough and plumps it up like a cushion before rolling it into balls.

“No one else seems to care about an old man living outside a community, away from his family.”

Mama folds up the fabric for the day, straightens, and rises to her feet, wincing. “You store too much in your head, Jane. Most of it imagined.”

“I'm not imagining. I hear things.” She pauses. “At Cruikshanks.” She slides the pan of biscuits into the oven, surprised at her own audacity.

Tommy sputters into his water cup. “Lance? Keep away from him. He's good at saying anything to get a rise out of people.”

Mama takes the soiled plaid cloth from the table and replaces it with a clean blue one. “If you would pay attention to what I'm doing now, you could make better wages sewing and not get caught up in people's lives washing clothes. The lace you tatted yesterday on the hankie shows you've got a natural talent with your fingers. It could save you from gossip. Your father always said, ‘Believing hearsay leads to disaster.'”

Jane wants to say, “Being honourable didn't keep him from disaster, now did it?” but instead she stands over the hottest part of the stove to camouflage the blood rising to her face. She had known it would be like this, so why is she surprised by her mother's and brother's refusal to listen? When her mother asks where Gomer is, she does not answer. Let one of them call outside for him. She is angry enough to suggest that he is as old as some of the little trappers who sit in cubbyholes in the mine wall, opening and closing stoppings to prevent buildup of poisonous damp. Let him do something useful for once.

Just then Gomer enters noisily. Sensing her daughter's vexation, Mary Owens speaks crossly to him. “And here's my towsy son at last. This family can't support guests for too long. When you're not helping to put food on the table, you can at least show respect by being on time for it.”

The young boy opens his mouth to explain that he has been looking for Christmas trees, but knows any excuse without evidence will be too thin for this group who have all forgotten how to have fun.

Silence settles on the supper table, broken only when Gomer asks to be excused after gobbling the last crumb of Jane's custard pie. On his way to a chair in the corner where he has left the
Boy's Almanac
, he stokes the fire in the living room stove. A look of amusement at this novel occurrence passes among the three left at the table, prompting another rare event: Mama gets up to wash dishes. Spared for once, Jane puts away food, stirs the fruit soaking in brandy for their Christmas cake and pudding, and adds sausage grease to the tin of fat she will use to make soap tomorrow. For a change Mama's complaints of dishwater on her eczema, which has flared up from sizing in the chintz, serve to calm Jane in their familiarity.

Mama has just sat down with her knitting when a quiet knock is heard at the back door. Jane opens it to find Louis Strong standing on their stoop, holding onto something with an apologetic smile on his face.

“Miss Jane, ah don't aim to disturb your family circle, but ah spy a fine Christmas tree close to my cabin and having no use for it myself, ah'd be pleased if you could find a place for it.” He holds up a Scotch pine, so perfectly shaped it might have been carved as a model for a Grimm fairy tale.

Louis hesitates at Jane's invitation to come in, insisting that he only wants to deliver the tree, but her smile soon has the old man standing awkwardly in the kitchen, bowing to the figures he can barely see in the next room.

“Good evening, Mr. Strong,” says Mama from the couch, and Thomas offers his hand.

“Louis brought us a Christmas tree,” says Jane, “a beautiful Scotch pine.”

Louis shifts back and forth. “Good evening, good evening. Would you like me to carry it inside for you all?”

“I'll do it tomorrow,” says Thomas, “when we've cleared a space for it and my sister has made the popcorn strings.”

Jane nods. “It's just what we were looking for. Thank you, Louis.”

“Maybe Mr. Strong would like a cup of tea before he heads back home,” says Mama, advising Jane of the proper form of address in his presence.

“Of course,” says Jane, so surprised by her mother's hospitality that she almost trips pulling a chair out for him. “Please sit down, Mr. Strong.”

More and more embarrassed by the formality, Louis inches back toward the door. “Thank you, thank all o' you kind folks, but ah best be gettin' back home. My daughter Ruby say she might stop in to see her old man on her way from the teacherage before she goes to Salt Spring for the holiday.”

“You're not going?”

“No, no, such celebrations ain't for me. Ah prefer the quiet. 'Specially now ah don't like to leave.”

“Everything all right, Lou — Mr. Strong?” Jane follows him to the doorway, lowering her voice. “Is it what we talked about?” She blushes, “With your son?”

“You might say that. Getting harder and harder to trust anyone besides family and you, Miss Jane. Seems like your people a good set o' folk too.”

“Tell me if I can do anything, Louis,” she says beyond her mother's earshot. “But where's your laundry?”

Louis shakes his head. “No, no, Miss Jane. You need a holiday too. Ah'll be all right.” Once outside, he breathes more freely, tipping his hat as he backs into the night.

“Merry Christmas, Louis,” she calls. “And to your family,” she adds to some muffled words coming from the darkness.

As Jane turns to go in, her eye catches the bright scarlet berries of their holly bush illuminated by kitchen light. All at once, the thought of the gleaming red and green proclaiming the season delights her. Carefully she breaks off a few of the prickly boughs for decoration in the house. In so doing, she is overtaken by a stronger, more unexpected sensation: a light heart. It ascends to a level it has not reached since her last Christmas in Wales. How had she believed just hours ago this place had been erased? Where did this ripple of joy come from? Is it mixed in with the thick, spongy Canadian air? Or is it that her family, fellow survivors of that faraway life, might just be listening to her after all? Perhaps Mama is right about her imaginings. Life does go on outside her head. Louis hinted at trouble again, but his face looked more peaceful than she has seen it for a while. Perhaps Ruby's visit has raised his hopes, as his has Jane's. Even more than hope, it is the realization that this moment and this place are where, who, why, and what Jane Owens is. They have everything to do with where, who, why, and what she has been, but the here and now is a leap from that collection of years. A flash of herself as a little girl in Wales comes to her. Writing the word “Jane” in big letters for the first time across her slate board, she remembers the strange, shy, and thrilling feeling that exploded within her. What was private suddenly became public — as if, in her young mind, she might have been a fluctuation of people and names until this one was recorded for everyone to view. She feels the same strength anchored to that name and that person again now. Remarkable as this vision seems, Jane knows how silly she would sound if she tried to explain it to Mama or Tommy. Maybe Cassie would understand if she could tell her in person, but she suspects what she feels at this moment can only be grasped beyond the realm of words.

Footsteps approaching on the path startle her back to the holly bush. They are followed by a low greeting. “Good evening, Jane.”

“Hello, Roland. I didn't know Tommy was expecting you.”

“How do you know I'm not here to see you?”

Jane flushes. “Come in, we've just had supper.”

Roland pauses at the door. “Where did you get the tree?”

“Louis Strong brought it over.”

Roland appears dismayed. “That's what I came for. There are nice ones not far from my place and I wanted to find out if you want one. Fir they are, nice size. Prettier than pine, my mother always said, when she was alive and we used to have Christmas.”

Jane hears the music in Roland's soft voice for the first time. “A Welshman like us,” her mother often says after his visits. She considers the Finns, the largest group of settlers in Chase River, too much unto themselves and their speech incomprehensible. When she says this, Jane wonders what the Finns think of Mary Owens, who never leaves her house?

“Thank you for asking, but the pine will do us fine. Maybe you could take a fir for yourself and your father. In memory of your mother.”

Roland snorts. “Christmas at our house? The only way I know it's a holiday is that my old man will be passed out at home because they've closed the tavern. Our cookstove will be cold as a coffin, as usual.”

“Then you must join us,” says Jane, her hospitality quickly deflating as Roland's hand brushes her waist from behind on the way into the kitchen.

Mary Owens offers their guest a cup of tea, rising from the sofa to make it herself. Roland nods his thanks and makes himself comfortable on a kitchen chair, but Tommy has his jacket on. “We'll be going just now. Take a pint or two at the Whistle Stop, then maybe stop in at the Christmas dance.”

Roland winks at Jane. “Your brother's in a hurry to get to the dance. Any idea why?”

Jane busies herself breaking the holly branches into smaller sprigs, not wanting to accept the possibility of Lizzie Carter in their lives. Clinging to the remaining shreds of her glow, she hopes to express her mood, if not the details, in a letter to Cassie soon. In the meantime, she will make the popcorn strings, then chase Gomer out of his chair where the light is brightest, and read
Jane Eyre,
which Mama found at a used book sale for her birthday on a rare train trip to Nanaimo.