Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (20 page)

Suddenly Tierney, tired, and tired of it all, stepped aside, revealing a startled Anne, and simply waited for her to speak.

“Well?” the man said again, more than his eyes frosty by now; his voice also revealed his suspicions about these two.

Anne gulped, but managed, “I’ve coom . . . come aboot . . . about a waitress job. Can ye . . . you direct us to the proper person to talk to aboot . . . about it?” With each correction Anne’s color rose and her eyes glazed a little more.

“The back door,” the man said rigidly, “would have been the proper place to come. But,” he added, more graciously, “I am the person to see. Step this way, if you please.”

Anne gave Tierney an anguished look as they followed the stiff back of the dining room’s “host.”
I’d hae been better off wi’ Frank Schmidt!
Anne was obviously saying silently. Tierney forced herself to ignore her. The time for action had come; there would be no more shilly-shallying.

The small room off the dining area seemed to be an office, and here Tierney and Anne were seated.

“I’m Mr. Whidby,” the man said, having seated himself at a desk. “I have charge of the dining room and kitchen. You’ve come to the right place.” The long face took satisfaction in the small moment of power. Watching, Tierney didn’t have a good feeling about this Mr. Whidby. But Anne had showed herself capable of looking after herself back in Binkiebrae, and she could do it again, though Tierney hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

Mr. Whidby, as many others had done before him, was now assessing sweet Anne with half-closed lids. He obviously liked what he saw, which had nothing whatsoever to do with her ability to work.

“Ah, unfortunately,” Mr. Whidby said, and he did indeed seem sorry, “there is no opening at the present time in the dining room.”

Tierney’s heart plummeted; Anne actually seemed relieved, in spite of her pressing need to get settled with a job.

“But—” Mr. Whidby continued, clearing his throat and twiddling with a pencil on the desktop.

Tierney’s hopes lifted; Anne’s face went still.

“—there is an opening in the kitchen.” It was spoken regretfully. “If you’d rather wait,” he added, looking hopeful, “until an opening for a waitress comes along . . . ?”

“Na, na,” Anne spoke up quickly. “The kitchen will be fine, jist fine. In fact—”

Tierney was sure Anne was going to say “I prefer it,” but Anne seemed to collect herself, stumbled a bit, and finished, “—I’m sure I’m better suited for kitchen work.”

“You’ve had experience, then?” the surprised man asked.

“Well, hasn’t every woman?”

“Oh, you mean general kitchen work, like in the home. I’m afraid,” Mr. Whidby said somewhat superciliously, “restaurant kitchen work is a good deal different. But,” he added, half-closing his eyes and studying Anne again, “you’ll catch on quickly, and do very well. I, personally, shall supervise you.” And again—that hand rubbing.

Rather than blanching, as Tierney had feared Anne would do, she flushed, and her eyes—those lovely eyes—glittered. Anne was fighting back. Hurray for Anne! Tierney cheered silently. Anne would work at the Madeleine, but Anne would be prepared.

“We’ll go back and introduce you to the staff,” Mr. Whidby said, rising. “If you wish, you may start right away. Ordinarily you’ll work from six to six, or ten to ten. Just now they’re preparing for the dinner hour, which will soon be upon us. A train arrives about then, and we usually have an overflow crowd.”

Once again the man led the way, down a hall, to the back, and into a large, hot room abustle with activity. At least three women and two girls were busy at tables or bending over one of the three ranges lined up along one wall. A boy was bringing wood from the outside, plunking it down noisily into a wood box. Everyone turned momentarily to stare at the newcomer.

“This is cook,” Mr. Whidby said, indicating a red-faced, hefty woman of forty or so. “Mrs. Corcoran. Mrs. Corcoran, this is . . . ah, what did you say your name was, young lady?”

“Anne Fraser.”

Mrs. Corcoran reached a sweaty but clean hand toward her new help, and her fleshy face creased in a smile that seemed sincere.

“Welcome aboard,” she said. “Glad to have you. Now, that’s Maysie, that’s Dora, and . . .” Mrs. Corcoran gave up on the introductions. “Ah, shucks, you’ll get acquainted as you work. This, though,” and she indicated the merry-faced lad, “is Spalpeen. Not his name, of course—it’s unpronounceable, some foreign concoction or other. Spalpeen seems to fit him.”

Spalpeen grinned a gap-toothed smile, touched a hand to his forehead, and made a face at Mrs. Corcoran behind her back.

The girls couldn’t hide the grins that lit their faces spontaneously.

“What’s he up to now?” Mrs. Corcoran asked comfortably, reaching back, taking the towhead by an ear, pulling him toward her. “Your face will freeze that way if you’re not careful. More wood, boy,” she commanded, “and bring a bushel of potatoes while you’re at it, if you’ve got all that energy to waste, makin’ faces an’ all.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Spalpeen said smartly, and he sidestepped the pudgy hand that reached to smack him lightly.

“Too smart for his own britches,” the cook and kitchen queen growled, but happily. “Just off the boat. Like you?”

“I guess ye could say that,” Anne answered. “We coom from Sco’land—”

Perhaps it was the “Sco’land,” but Mrs. Corcoran rolled her eyes and interjected, “What else! Scotland, of course. We have a Swede, a Hungarian, and a coupla Irish gals here; why not a Scottish lassie?”

Tierney was feeling better and better about leaving Anne at the Madeleine. She had no doubts about Anne’s ability to work, and work satisfactorily, and now the work place seemed to be all they could want. Almost . . . almost, one could forget the slit-eyed Mr. Whidby. Surely the redoubtable Mrs. Corcoran would be more than a match for him, particularly here in her own domain.

“Lay aside your shawl, my dear,” that round figure of authority was saying, “and we’ll give you an apron, a big one that’ll
about swallow you up but will keep that nice skirt and waist clean. I’d suggest you save it for . . .” Mrs. Corcoran’s eyes narrowed as she studied Anne’s buxom figure emerging from the wrap’s encompassing folds, “for the day you’re invited to join the waitresses in the dining room.”

Before Tierney turned away, to return to the hostel and a further wait for her phantom employer, she saw Anne settled at a dry sink with a paring knife in her hand and a mountain of potatoes at her elbow. A piece of the first one to be peeled was popped into the pink mouth, and Tierney remembered that neither of them had had any breakfast. Anne would find plenty to nibble on, for fresh bread was being withdrawn from a cavernous oven by one of the workers, and Spalpeen was lugging in a basket of carrots. Even as she watched, Mrs. Corcoran was pouring a cup of coffee, waddling with it to Anne, and settling it beside her. Never mind that Anne would much prefer tea; she was here, in the new land, and its ways would, without a doubt, soon be her ways.

But not completely. With the influx of domestics came their ways, their habits, their practices, their values, to shape and mold the new land into something unique. From the new mix would come—Canadians. Along with the hundreds, yea thousands, of females who would pour in from the British Isles came strong Victorian social values to become established as the norm for prairie society. Tea, coffee—typical of the blend of the new breed being established, rooted and grounded, in the virgin soil of the Northwest Territories.

Hungry herself, with no raw potatoes to munch on, Tierney took a place in the dining room and ordered tea and toast. She longed for a scone and vowed that as soon as she was settled in a kitchen again, those missing treats would be available once more, a breath of home and a satisfaction to a stomach grown flat and a body grown thin on fare to which they were unaccustomed, and to which they had not adjusted.

Always slim, Tierney was now bone-thin, a condition that was obviously unacceptable in the eyes of Mr. Whidby when he approached the table, rubbing his hands, studying her critically.

“Would you be looking for work too, Miss—”

“Caulder. Na . . . no, thank you. I have employment,” she answered stiffly, liking neither him nor the rasping sound of his dry hands.

“Ah, well then, I won’t put in a good word for you—above stairs. As a maid, you know. We have three dozen rooms here . . . a thriving enterprise.” Mr. Whidby, an employee as much as anyone else on the floor, wouldn’t be associated with anything second-rate, it was clear.

With a sniff regarding Tierney’s reference to her “employment,” Mr. Whidby moved on, to rub his hands at the side of a table where three ladies dawdled over pots of tea and their husbands took themselves off to whatever business had brought them here.

Tierney enjoyed her walk back to the hostel; there was no sense in going anywhere else. Though she would have enjoyed acquainting herself with the town and wandering through its marketplace and shops, she had no money to spend. And always on her mind and worrying her considerably—her future.

Where oh where was Mr. Ketchum? Would she, too, have need to find work here in town? It had no appeal for the Binkiebrae girl who saw, looking up, a sky larger and bluer than any she had ever known back home, and which satisfied her homesick soul with its vastness. But, strain her eyes as she might, she could not see, anywhere at all, the hint of a hill or even a bulge that might indicate something other than flat, flat, flat earth. How could a Binkiebrae girl survive without her hills? The flatness of the land, as much as anything else, made Tierney realize just how removed she was from all that was dear and familiar.

Entering the hostel, it took a moment for Tierney’s eyes to adjust. When they did, it was to see a tall, thin, kind-eyed, rather pale-faced man rise from a chair in the parlor, to step toward her uncertainly.

“Miss Caulder? I’m Will Ketchum.”

O
h!” In spite of the fact that she had been waiting for him, in spite of the long, long trip with this very moment in mind, Tierney was momentarily taken aback.

What had she expected? Some vague notion of a Binkiebrae farmer or fisherman, with high color, sturdy build, rough clothes? Here was a man more like a teacher or a merchant—certainly a gentleman—finely dressed, though simply, with something about him that spoke of “quality” even to the untrained eyes of the Scottish lass.

“Miss Caulder?” the well-modulated, perhaps educated voice, said again.

“Aye. That is, yes,” Tierney said, flushing a bit. “And ye are—”

“Will Ketchum, as I said. If I’m not mistaken you have a contract similar to this one.” And the man unfolded a paper he had been holding; it did indeed bear the crest of the British Women’s Emigration Society.

“Aye, of course.”

It was then Tierney glimpsed the small boy standing half concealed by the man, clutching the man’s leg and peeping around shyly.

“This,” Will Ketchum said, pulling the tot around and forward, keeping his hand on the small shoulder, “is my son, William. We call him Buster.”

“How old is he? How old are you, Buster?” Tierney said, speaking directly to the boy who now stood before her bravely. Sturdy, neatly dressed, clean, shining haired, his cap was in his hand in exact imitation of his father.

Shy though he was, he answered properly, “Free. I’m free.”

The man didn’t seem to consider it necessary to repeat the child’s age, correcting his pronunciation. Tierney, somehow, liked that.

“Shall we sit, Miss Caulder?” the man asked, indicating a settee and some rather worn plush chairs. Across the room the clerk, head bent assiduously over his books, took in every word.

“First,” Will Ketchum said, “let me apologize for my delay. I started out in plenty of time, but one horse went lame. I finally made arrangements to leave him at a homestead along the way and use one of theirs.

“It’s the way of the homesteader,” he explained. “I may have opportunity to do the same for him someday, obliging or assisting in some equally important manner. If not for him, there’ll be others needing help in one of a hundred ways. Pity the poor settler who lives in total isolation. Our nearest neighbor,” he said, after a pause, “is eight miles from us.”

He sounded as if Tierney might as well begin her stay among them by understanding the situation. And true enough, it was startling. Even after so long a time and having seen so many lonely homesteads, Tierney was startled to realize, finally, that it was happening to her. She blinked, making an effort to keep her face from any overt sign of dismay. Eight miles! Too far to walk during her few hours off, that’s for sure!

Isolation. Again the word, and the reality, raised its head, and it wasn’t a pretty one.

“Even so,” Will Ketchum said, pursuing the subject rather doggedly, “we manage to get together with other folk for certain occasions. Even now one of our neighbors—if thirteen miles away can be called a neighbor—is with Mrs. Ketchum . . . Lavinia.”

“Is Mrs. Ketchum . . .
all right?
” With care and forethought the “a’ reet,” came out correctly.

Mr. Ketchum hesitated. “Mrs. Ketchum is . . . with child. Yes, she’s all right. But there are the chickens—so many chickens; it’s a chicken farm, you know—the pigs, a cow to be milked. But even more than those reasons—I don’t want her to be alone. Anything can happen, and does, from time to time. It’s a fearful thing to be alone and far from help in time of emergency.”