Lily's Story (32 page)

Lily finally got up the
courage to ask Lucille if she knew anything about Tom’s call to
Toronto. Lucille didn’t, but speculated that he might be home
either the next day or not at all – depending on her
mood.

Lily could not sleep. Two
nightmares recurred and competed to keep her edgy and restless. In
one a pulpy-pink fish with her daughter’s eyes lay belly-up at the
bottom of an ebony stream where fierce currents roared by, carrying
with them ribbons and braids and colophons of infant-flesh until
its idiom-bone showed through and let the tides polish it to
fossil; the eyes alone remained in their jellied pools, like
orphaned pollywogs. In the second dream she and Tom were riding on
a train, not in a passenger coach but on top of the tender; they
were roaring through a night-blizzard with the engine’s boiler
red-hot and sizzling; the two of them were laughing and tossing
their clothes into the white wind, and the train was rising up off
the tracks and driving skyward into the throat of the maelstrom
that contended, in its own accelerating screams, with those of the
locomotive and the lovers posed to collide…

Mrs. Edgeworth changed the
sweat-soaked sheets each morning, and thought of calling the
doctor. She feared that Lily was having a relapse, and fading
fast.

Then Tom returned – in
the regalia of his militia unit, and a rapid recovery
ensued.

“I
t's a wonderful
city, Lily. Full of parks and brick buildings and a beautiful lake.
You must see it sometime. When you’re better.”

“
I am
better,
Tom.
Really.”

“
You look
pale.”

“
I been
indoors too much.”

“
I never
should’ve left you!”

“
I’ll be goin’
home. Probably next week.”

Lily held her hands like
a prayer in her lap. The sun, through the scrim of trees in the
garden gilded her face. In a voice about to break Tom said, “You’re
the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Lily felt herself on the edge
of a precipice. She shuddered – memory and dream propelling the
commotion in her blood. She longed for the unknown yet knew too
much. She needed to surrender unconditionally to some mystery, some
hazard beyond these torturing certainties.

“
I heard them
words before,” she heard herself say. “Just before he ruined
me.”

“
For Christ’s
sake, Lily, why
do
you take your bitterness out on me?
I’m trying to help you. I’m your
friend
.”

“
I
know.”

“
I love you,”
he said to stop the pain.

Lily studied him. In a voice
that was an echo of a whisper, she said, “I can’t love a man who
pities me.”

The distant door slammed like a
cannon-shot in a barracks.

W
hy haven’t you
written me? Lily asked her Aunt between the alternating nightmares.
Mrs. Edgeworth had persuaded her to send a telegram to Port Sarnia,
but it was returned with the curt message: “No response”. On the
third day of Tom’s unexplained disappearance – even his Aunt looked
anxious – Lily announced that she was better and would leave for
home the next day, the fifteenth of August. She had been away for
over three months.

Mrs. Edgeworth teetered on the
brink of panic; all her breeding was about to dissolve under her.
“He’ll be back,” she said, dropping all pretense. “I know him,
dear-heart.”

“
I got to see
my Aunt,” Lily said.

“
Oh, I know,
Lily, I know I can’t keep you. I’ve been too selfish already. But
you are such a sweet, such a kind thing –”

“
Can you buy a
ticket for me?” Lily asked.

“
Of course, I
can. You can have all the money you need.”

“
Just the
ticket, please. And I’d like to send another telegram if I could,
asking them to meet me at the station.”

“
Of course, of
course.”

Lily slumped in her chair. Mrs.
Edgeworth came over. Without looking Lily reached for her hands,
and the two women held each other that way, rocking gently back and
forth in the midst of their mutual helplessness. In the kitchen
they could hear Lucille’s grotesque whimpering.

2

L
ily was just about to
settle into one of her nightmares when she was awakened by a loud
scuffle and bumping below. Mrs. Edgeworth’s scream shot up to the
gables of the house. “Come back here you – you
blackguard!”

Lily sat bolt
upright, her thin gown pulled down to the tips of her
breast
s, as the door popped
open and Tom staggered in behind it. He had not removed his boots
nor his cloak; his eyes were wild with fatigue and fading rage. She
fully expected to see him foam at the mouth.

“
Goddammit,
I
will
have you! I will!” He flung his cloak across the
room, spilling the figurine of a mermaid which cracked lengthwise
on the carpet. Lily didn’t move. If she were aware that most of her
bosom was exposed in the dim light from the hall and in the lamp
her demon lover now swung towards her, she made no move to cover
herself.

The lamp fell to the
floor, and Tom lurched onto the bed beside her. “I will have you, I
will, I will,” he muttered into the slurred haze in front of him.
His hands clasped her bare shoulders and in their rough urgency
jerked the nightgown down to her waist. He froze. Her sharp breath
and his heaving gasp for air filled the room. He stared at her
breasts.

He rocked back, chin sagging to
chest.

Mrs. Edgeworth, having found a
candle, could be heard huffing up the stairs.

“
It’s all
right, Auntie,” Lily called. “Tom got in the wrong room by mistake.
He’s comin’ down.”

A
fter breakfast Lily
asked to be alone for a while in the garden she had seen through
its best season and come to love. She was there after mid-morning
when Tom came up to her. He looked wary but was shaved and trim in
his uniform.

“
Lily,” he
said, “I can’t live without you. I have every reason to believe you
have strong feelings for me. Last night was the last time you’ll
ever see me drunk.”

Lily gave him no help, but even
in his turmoil he could see that she was alert and listening. “I
love you. I don’t pity you. How can anyone pity a person who is
twice as strong as they are? I may not know what love is, but I can
still say I love you and know I’m telling the truth.”

“
Yes,” Lily
said.

“
Here is a
token of what I feel,” he said shyly, opening his fist – his sword
hand – and letting the sun catch the facets of the ruby stone set
in a gold ring. “My mother’s,” he said. “For you. For
us.”

Lily made no gesture towards
the words or the gift.

“
I’m asking
you to marry me right away, to go off to Toronto with me. I’ve got
word that the Regulars will take me; that’ll mean a salary, a home
for us, perhaps by the lake or on the island.”

Lily looked as if she
were struggling to interpret the speech of an earnest but
thick-tongued foreigner. Surprise, wonder, doubt –all contended
there as Tom talked on.

“
I’m almost
certain to be stationed at Fort York, unless some foreign war broke
out, but there’s little chance of that. Lily, I’m asking you to
take a chance on me. I’ll love you like no other man will ever love
you.”

Lily had no doubts about
that.

“
I do love
you,
Tom.”

“
Then you’ll
marry me?”

Lily looked away, then back. “I
can’t,” she said.

“
But
why
?”

She felt the full weight of his
hurt and her own.

“
I can’t marry
a soldier.”

3

“I
’ve sent the
telegram,” said a chastened Mrs. Edgeworth. Over and over she
apologized for the behaviour of her nephew, last night and again
this morning when he smashed the glass on her china cabinet and
stomped off to his drunken pals again. “I’m just thankful the dear
Colonel was not alive to see it,” she said, wishing he were here to
help, to share the guilt, to give her life some point once
more.

“
I’ll come to
visit you,” Lily said, tucking the baggage tickets in the little
leather purse Lucille had insisted she take.

“
You’re not
just saying that?”

“
Soon as I’m
sure everythin’s okay at home.”

“
God bless
you, child.”

“
Thank you for
everythin’,” Lily said shyly. The locomotive let out a peremptory
blast.

“
Last night,”
said Mrs. Edgeworth, “when you called down to me, did you...die you
mean –”

“
Yes,
Auntie
,” Lily said, ending the embrace. She stepped aboard,
turning her back on London and all it had brought with it. Over the
shriek of the whistle she mouthed, “Goodbye, Auntie, I love
you.”

I
n less than ten
minutes the train had left the city and plunged straight into the
bush. Lily sat by herself on a bench and gazed blankly at the
landscape fleeing past her. In two hours she would be in Port
Sarnia, a journey that only three years before would have taken her
a full day in ideal weather. She thought of her own two-day’s trek
up the River so long ago.

Here and there, as the coach
rocked and swayed, Lily noted the gaps in the trees where a farm
had been cleared up to the right-of-way, an occasional cabin in the
distance with its chimney-smoke indolent in the afternoon haze, the
flash of an apron or chemise signalling life, and hope. Beyond the
thick border of woods on either side of the track lay hundreds of
partially cleared farms like these. The bush had been broken.

Lily soon
found herself very drowsy. The repetition of tree-line and the
rocking monotony of the wheels below her made her heavy-lidded.
Though she was certain she was not asleep, the images of sleep rose
up and fell away. She was in the cabin brushing her mother’s hair,
pulling the livid sun through it with every stroke, and Mama was
smiling at her and saying what a sweet voice she had even though
Lily’s lips were not moving except to record the cadence of her
combing. Then Maman LaRouche appeared, her cheeks buffed by
oven-heat, the sweat bubbling through her grin as she bent down to
the wee sprite of a girl and wrapped her in the great loaves of her
forearms. Behind her at the verge of the North Field, Old Samuels
waved at her, and as the girl danced towards him, the smoke from
his calumet whitened around him and he dissolved tenderly in the
green backdrop of his own words –
take me with you, take me with you, I will tell you their
meaning
but the waif trips on
a stone and when she looks up the figure is gone and the
grave-ground under her is ice-cold and she is about to cry when
Papa comes to launch her upon his shoulder and they stride through
the umber dawn towards a sun rising in the east, there is the
rhythm of skin-drums and a ululating chant as the wood wakens to
the ancient tribal roundelay, and the girl is about to dance when
out of the river’s silver surface slides a black hand and arm and
shoulder and – eyeless – the thing is beckoning her down where the
currents run as deep as blood in the antechambers of the
earth.

The train jogged, bucked,
shuddered and squealed to a halt. Lily looked out. They were not in
Port Sarnia.

“
What are we
doin’ here?” she heard a male voice ask the conductor farther down
the coach. She could hear the confusion of people collecting their
belongings and shuffling to the exits.

“
Wyoming
Station,” said a deeper voice. “Gotta stop here now. It’s the oil
boom south of here. Dozens of people every day, carryin’ their life
on their backs. Diggin’ for oil. Crazy, the whole bunch of
them.”

When Lily opened her eyes
again, they were moving cautiously through the environs of Port
Sarnia, now referred to by the natives as just plain Sarnia. She
picked up her carpetbag crammed with the gifts she could find no
way to refuse, and walked through the stifling air to the end of
the coach where she waited quietly until the train stopped. The
conductor took her bag as she stepped down, and held her arm.

“
Watch your
step, ma’am,” he said, following her with his practiced
eye.

Lily stood in the bracing air
of the open platform, unable to look around her. In a few minutes
she was almost alone. No one called out her name. No one was
waiting for her. She went over to the baggage-man and asked if he
could find her a taxi. He took all of her in – slowly – then said ,
“Yes, ma’am. Just here for a visit, are you?” He whistled towards
the livery area.

Lily smiled her gratitude.
Moments later Pig-Eye Poland, who had driven cart and cab for two
decades, pulled up with his pair of bays. Lily gave him the
instructions.

“
You from
London?” he asked when they were underway.

“
Just
arrived,” Lily said to the man who had waved to her every Saturday
as she trotted Benjamin up to the back door of the St. Clair
Inn.