More in Anger (14 page)

Finally Pearl heard from Tom. He had received her terrible letters and loved her anyway, he said. He wasn't angry; she should know
by now that he wasn't an angry sort of person. He said that he did indeed think of her in her desolate state and that he was sorry she was unhappy. He had been down in the doldrums himself, he said, and her loving letter—as opposed to her unloving one, she said to herself—had done much to boost his morale. Well, that was something, she supposed. But what would he do to
help
her?

A letter from her friend Marion came in the same mail. Dear, precious Marion made a casual yet monumental remark that would change the course of Pearl's destiny, give her hope, and bring light to her ever-darkening world. Marion said casually, commenting on Pearl's situation, about which she had been hearing a lot, “Well, Pearl, you could always come and live in Knowlton.” Pearl's heart,
arising from sullen earth like the lark at break of day
, as she told her sister May, began to beat with excitement. Knowlton! Of course! Pearl knew Knowlton. She had been there. She had gone home with Marion one weekend and had found Knowlton to be a delightful place. She and Ruby could be happy there. They
would
be happy there. Why wouldn't they be? Oh, joy! What a tremendous, blessed relief it would be to leave all this behind. (And wouldn't that just fix her mother!)

Through further communications by letter and one or two secret phone calls, Pearl learned from Marion that she could rent a furnished house for between thirty and forty dollars a month. That there were women in town who did washing well and cheaply. That she could hire a man to stoke the furnace every night and morning and haul ashes for ten dollars a month. That some houses had electric stoves and that most had modern plumbing. That the local doctor was a graduate of McGill. Pearl got out her chequebook and a small notebook with a gold pencil
and began to plan. And then she started a letter to her lord and master Tom, in which she would convey the results of her research and tell him that she was on the verge of defying his command and leaving Alberta. He could say aye or nay as he chose, but she had made up her mind.

April 20, 1945

Dear Tom
,

I am so glad you have given your consent (as I do want you to be happy). The thought of leaving here sustains me through every day.

The robins and bluebirds have arrived here—very early. I hope, how I hope, it is spring where I am going, too. My trunk is partly packed.

Tonight I know that the accusation made by my mother that I am cold and unfeeling could not be further from the truth, to quote the sage. The fact is that I am a veritable blazing furnace. I swear I'll never again be able to bear the excitement of actual contact.

I miss you so much. How I long for the day we are reunited … in Quebec!

Oh darling, I love you so very, very much. Put your arms around me tight and hold me close. Mm-mm
.

Love
,

Pearl

P.S. Your parcel should reach you soon. The tins of sausages are from Mother
.

All she had ever really wanted was her own way, and now that she all but had it, the skies were blue again. She had arranged to leave Calgary for Montreal on the train on May 1, spend a weekend in Montreal and then proceed to Knowlton on the Monday. Before long Tom would join them and then the three of them would live happily ever after. She knew it. What could possibly go wrong now?

She'd had a long talk with her father about her intended departure, and the air was much clearer between them. She had gone up to his study, where he had closed the door and offered her a glass of sherry. He knew how hard it was for her, he said. He knew what her mother could be like. He had been simply wonderful, and she had come away feeling happy. He had even offered to drive them to the station. But when she attempted to have a similar conversation with her mother, it was a miserable, horrid flop. Why had she hoped it might be otherwise? Ever since, Opal had been causing an awful stink and was impossible to get along with. She was mad at Pearl. She was mad at her husband. She was mad at Bill and Marge Black next door.

Three whole seasons before she would need winter clothes again. Now the sweaters and jackets were all in the trunk. Couldn't her mother see that it was in her best interests to be in Pearl's good books so that there would be a better chance of her coming home soon? (She
hadn't
told anyone, not even Tom, that this might well be permanent. She had decided to leave them with the impression that she was having an extended holiday. She hadn't told Tom's parents anything at all yet, but when she did—she would mail them a letter—she would tell them the same thing. When—or if—she decided she didn't like where she
was, she would come back, and her parents would be glad to have her. And Ruby too, of course.)

Marge and Bill Black invited Pearl and her parents next door for a goodbye luncheon, to which she went alone as her mother was still having a spat with Marge over cooking with alcohol (putting wine in sauces, specifically), and before the meal was served Bill plied Pearl with so much Scotch she was in a pleasant haze for the remainder of the afternoon. How calm and happy she felt as she ambled home in the sunshine! Nothing got her riled. This, she supposed dreamily, lounging on the chesterfield in the living room, her head on a tasselled velvet cushion, was how alcoholics were made. It wasn't so much an addiction to alcohol, she decided, as an aversion to real life. Perhaps if she could keep herself well lubricated … and then she fell asleep.

The first night in their new home, Dr. and Mrs. Tom Mayfield stood together in the living room, raised their sherry glasses and proposed a toast to the future. The couple stood in profile as they lightly clinked the rims of their glasses together, Tom, Pearl and the fire all reflected in the tall plate glass windows behind them. Though they didn't speak of it directly, they both knew that the purchase of this house was intended to mark the end of many disappointments, and to be the start of a happier, more stable and prosperous time together.

“Here's to no more locums!” said Pearl.

“Here's to ‘Home, Sweet Home,'” said Tom, and they kissed.

Pearl was almost six inches shorter than her husband, and while no one would ever call her fat, she liked to say, she might be called buxom. Still trim after two children. She was wearing a plaid box-pleated skirt and a round-neck sweater. Her amber clip-on earrings matched the simple string of beads around her neck. Tom, over six feet tall and almost too thin, was wearing a light grey suit that fit him loosely and was rumpled after a full day's work in his new practice with Dr. Strong. He still wore his tie, but he had loosened it. She took the sherry glass from Tom's hand and put the two glasses down on the mantelpiece. “Let's go and stoke the fire,” she said. Then she lifted her eyebrows and he followed her up the two steps from the living room and down the hall.

The Tom Mayfields began their new life in the rural part of Beresford with a somewhat romantic vision of the pretty acreage they had bought from a family named Lightbody, who had been cured of that perception and had returned to the city. Tom and Pearl now owned ten acres of partially cleared land, where the Lightbody family had planted an orchard and built a long, low house for themselves room by room as they could afford to (the pre-plumbing outhouse was still standing twenty yards or so from the house). The house stood on the edge of a ravine that led down through mature fir and cedar trees to a healthy brown creek with wildflowers and vine maples thriving along its banks, skunk cabbages in its mud. A fallen tree served as a bridge. More forest lay beyond. Outside the living room windows, a black walnut tree thrived in the middle of an uneven, intermittently green lawn. The whole property seemed perfect, even idyllic, and their two daughters, Ruby and Laurel, twelve and six, both loved it,
loved the grass, the apple trees, the wildflowers. Ruby disappeared into the woods to read a book; Laurel disappeared to climb trees.

Small brown rabbits peeked out from the ferns. Birds chirped in the trees. It was a setting from D.H. Lawrence, thought Pearl, as she undressed with her back to her husband. And anticipated with pleasure the feel of his naked body against hers, his lean, cool torso, his strong fingers. Their bodies drew them together in expressions of love more than anything else—if that's what their intermittent commingling was these days. Their communication was otherwise poor, but in this,
this
, their communication was direct, and strong, and pure, and they were close, loving, as they lay together afterwards. That all changed as soon as they stood up.

It was a rude shock to both of them when, before a year had passed, they realized how much work the acreage was going to be. Tom, concentrating on the world beyond the driveway—establishing his practice, learning the hospital routines, meeting new patients—worked long hours and was often out on calls in the night as well. He felt unable and unwilling to address anything else. He had reached his capacity, he said when she complained he was no help; she would have to pick up the slack. Pearl stayed home with their three daughters (Amethyst was born nine months after they moved in), six months pregnant with yet another, unplanned.

All too quickly Pearl had realized just how isolated they were from like-minded people and how ridiculous the romantic vision she and Tom had shared had been. Instead of lambs frolicking in fields while a shepherd and shepherdess made floral
crowns for each other under a blue sky with white, fluffy clouds that Wordsworth might have enjoyed describing, there was a dirty, uncouth man in coveralls and a yellow slicker out in the pouring rain digging up the septic field with a backhoe for the third time.

In addition to the septic field problems, the motor that pumped water up to the house from the creek kept stopping and needing priming, so finally a well had to be dug and paid for. The furnace broke down and had to be replaced. The soil in the gardens was terrible, and Pearl could not make anything grow no matter how hard she worked, when she could, that is, which wasn't often, plagued as she was with all the children.

Dr. Strong had turned out to be a coarse, vulgar, drinking man who was quite different in person than on the page. His wife spent her afternoons in the beer parlour. Medicine was apparently not enough for Dr. Strong, because he also kept cows and farmed on the side. “Imagine!” said Pearl, and told her sister May the story Tom had told her at the dinner table in an attempt at conversation. Tom had reported that Strong had worn his manure-laden gumboots right into the operating theatre to deliver a baby. Likely, Tom had added, in the same way he might deliver a cow of her calf. And then Tom had told a joke, which she shared with May. “Did you hear the one about the man who was training his horse to go without food? It was going really well but then the horse up and died.”

“Ha ha,” said May. “The poor horse!”

“That's the kind of humour my husband finds funny. I doubt he could read it as a metaphor, however, which is too bad.”

Pearl didn't confide to May that she had started to feel little waves of panic as though she were going to drown. The waves
came when she had nothing left to give, when she was on her last legs, and yet still more was demanded of her. Nothing was ever enough for any of them. She always, it seemed, could hear one if not two children crying. “Leave me alone!” she cried, covering her ears. No one noticed her despair, no one cared. Tom was conveniently absent when the time came to deal with any and all of the problems. Their children demanded constant attention and offered nothing in return but more demands. Her parents harangued her for not writing. Everyone wanted something of her and no one gave back a thing. Ye gods. What kind of life was this turning out to be?

“But are you overall happy in Beresford, Pearl? I so hoped you would be happy there,” said May. “You thought you would be.”

“Well, if it were up to me, I would be,” Pearl retorted. “Or if I could get any help around here.” No doubt, she said, May's husband Fred was a bigger help to May. Lucky her. Here
she
was, with no help of any description, as anyone who wasn't blind could see if he actually wanted to, stuck in a rural neighbourhood six miles from the hick town of Beresford, a neighbourhood that was filled to the brim with uneducated people who either did not work at all or were labourers and small-time farmers whose wives spent their days doing who knew what. Gathering eggs. Making bread.

“Ah,” said May.

“And who, anywhere within fifty miles,” Pearl asked May, “would not look at me blankly if I said something like
Many people would sooner die than think
? Or if I said,
Too little liberty brings stagnation
, who would nod knowingly, and engage in conversation?”

“
I
might look at you blankly,” said May.

“But you know what I mean.”