The Age of Water Lilies (16 page)

Ann spoke into the phone again, then replaced the receiver on its small cradle.

“He is on his way.”

As she had been directed, Ann began heating water in a large kettle and taking extra towels and clean rags to Flora's room. She padded the bed with old sheets. Then she chipped some ice off the block in the icebox and dampened a washing flannel with cool water to bathe Flora's forehead, which was beaded with perspiration.

•  •  •

Three hours later, Flora was cradling a tiny howling daughter, wrapped in soft flannel, exhausted but exhilarated to have such tangible evidence that she had been loved by Gus. The baby was blue-eyed, with her mother's fair hair. You could not say yet about the nose, which was as small as a nose could be. As soon as she had been handed the child, after the cord had been cut and the tiny body cleaned, she gave her the name that she had been holding secret until she knew the gender. George for a boy, Grace for a girl. The room was lit by morning sun; a pear tree bloomed outside the window like a welcoming committee.

“May I?” asked Grace's grandfather, reaching to take the bundle. “She is a fine baby, Flora. And look, all ten toes and fingers! You have done well, my dear.”

“If only . . .” Flora started to say, then stopped herself. Robert Alexander would know, without her telling him, what she longed for in those precious moments following her daughter's birth. He patted her hand awkwardly, the other arm hand firmly holding his granddaughter to his heart.

There were times, holding the new Grace against her shoulder after a feeding, when Flora was reminded of the Grace she had known at Walhachin—her gurgle, her skin, the damp warmth she had left on Flora's lap when the two of them had fallen asleep in the rocker. And only a few days later, that earlier Grace was dead.

Flora sent a letter off to Gus almost immediately.
You would love her fingers,
she told him.
So small and perfect, and the soles of her feet, which have never touched the earth. Your father says she has your nose, but it is truly so little that I don't know how he can say that. But she is clearly a comfort to him. I don't know if he doted on you but he surely dotes on his granddaughter, stopping in so regularly that we have given him a key in the event we are busy with laundry—there is so much, I never would have dreamed such a tiny infant could need so many nappies, so many nightdresses. As a family we are perhaps unorthodox—a widow, an unmarried mother, a father so far away it might almost be another world, and a grandfather who has somehow accepted not only the child but also the household in which she lives. And cries! Oh Gus, her cry would break your heart.

The rabbit-skin booties were a delight to lace onto Grace's tiny feet, the fur soft against soles that had never touched the earth, never left a print in soil or snow. No item of clothing pleased Flora as well, though Ann had knitted sweaters of wool light as swan's down and Flora herself had smocked nightdresses sewn from flannel sprigged with nosegays of primroses and clover. When Flora put the booties on Grace's feet, she remembered the Indian woman's smile and the touch of those hands on her stomach like a blessing. Did she cast a spell upon me? wondered Flora. Because, riding the train down to the coast, she had woken from her brief sleep with the utter conviction that there was no shame in carrying the child of a man she loved with her whole heart, knowing that she would make her own way and not seek shelter with those who might want to take her child from her. The booties were proof of that moment.

•  •  •

Early June 1915

“Robert Alexander has telephoned, Flora,” said Ann, coming out to the garden where Grace slept in her pram under a tree while Flora wrote letters at the table. A letter to her mother, a letter to Jane—she wrote but did not expect them to answer. “He is coming over. He sounded very serious. I hope there's not bad news. I will stay out here with Grace so you can see him in the sitting room. I put the kettle on and the teapot is warm.”

He was at the door within ten minutes. Flora knew it was something awful when she saw him through the glass. He came in and hung his hat and his walking stick on the coat rack.

“There is no easy way to tell you this, Flora,” Robert began, taking Flora's hands in his own. “No easy way. A letter has come from the Front, from Gus's commanding officer. Gus was killed in action at Festubert on May 24. That is near Artois, I gather, a terrible battle, coming quite soon after Ypres.” His voice broke for a second, then he recovered himself. “The letter speaks of his bravery. As yet there is no body.”

“Could it be a mistake?” asked Flora, knowing that it couldn't. She felt a shiver running down her spine, a sensation her mother always referred to as “someone walking over a grave.”

“I do not believe it to be a mistake. I sent a wire to someone I know in Ottawa, an aide to the Minister of Militia and Defence, Sam Hughes, and he replied within the day to say that indeed there were casualties as the 5th and 7th Battalions took significant ground at Festubert and that my son's name was among those confirmed dead. Perhaps you should have a little brandy, my dear.”

Flora sat down and felt a glass being pressed into her cold hands. She was urged to drink. A fire surged down her throat and into her stomach, making her eyes water, but it was warm; after a second mouthful, she did feel less faint. Her hands were still cold. She began to weep, quietly at first, but then great sobs wracked her body. The doctor handed her his handkerchief and she held it to her eyes, pressing them as though to obviate sight completely. As though to obviate her life itself.

After a time—it might have been a few minutes, it might have been an hour—she remembered her guest. She composed herself. Wiping her eyes, smoothing her hair, she turned to him.

“I am so sorry, Robert. For you and Mrs. Alexander, who have not seen him in so long, as much as for myself, and for Grace, who will never know him.”

They talked for a time. Flora listened to her lover's father remember his son's childhood not a mile from where they sat, how he loved to take a lunch in his knapsack and walk for hours in any direction with his compass and his notebook (Flora remembered his note-taking on their own adventure in the Back Valley where skies had been described, birds accounted for, guesses made at geological formations), coming back late in the day with eyes shining and clothing covered in dust and grass seed. It was different then, much of the land still held by the
hbc
and not subdivided, though there were farms here and there. The hillsides were brush-covered and threaded with small creeks. She wept again to think of the young Gus wandering among the Garry oaks with his eyes skyward, taking in the blue distances.

When he took his leave, Dr. Alexander embraced Flora for a long moment.

“I am most grateful to you for letting me take you to tea that day. And for the gift of Grace.”

She watched him pull away from the house in his dark car. And then she walked slowly to the garden to tell Ann the news. And to take solace from the sweet damp smell of Grace's neck, to tighten the little laces on the rabbit-fur boots to keep her child's feet warm.

In her bed that night, Flora could not sleep. She relived every moment she'd spent with Gus, from the ride to Mary's cabin on the Deadman River when she'd almost swooned like a Victorian maiden at the sight of his forearms and their soft hairs to the few stolen nights in a cabin by a lake, reed-fringed and loud with blackbirds. There were thrilling encounters among the dry grass in the orchards where her body had fused with his by the ardour he knew how to awaken in her. The hidden canyon where they had picnicked by a little creek and reclined on a saddle blanket while hawks made lazy circles in the air. On one of those occasions, Grace had been conceived.

Subsequent days were difficult beyond imagining. So much of the pain of the past year was endured with the hope that Gus would return, they would be married and make a home together.

“How will I bear it, not just for today, but for the days that will follow?” she wept to Ann one evening after dinner.

“You must, Flora. For Grace and for yourself. And it will become, oh, not easier, but something that doesn't stab at your heart every minute as I know it must now. Try to walk. There is something about the seafront, the wind, the sound of waves: it somehow cleanses the thinking. You will want to think your way through this as well as feel your way. Not that you could help the latter, but it will be good to try to think what it means as well. I will make sure Grace is safe. Just walk, whenever you feel you can't do anything else. Between the spray of the tide and your tears, who is to know if you cry?”

•  •  •

Flora walked. In all weathers—and early summer always brought its fair share of wind and rain as well as clear sunny days—she would walk the waterfront, make her way through the lanes in the cemetery, climb the pretty streets to the high places where she could see the Olympic Peninsula on a cloudless day or else dense banks of fog on an unsettled one. It was as though she was looking for Gus, for his presence in the city of his youth. Looking for herself as she might have been, had she known him then. She would come upon lovers walking on the windy breakfront, the woman leaning into the man, and her heart would constrict. Or an old woman putting flowers into an urn on a grave in the cemetery, proof that grief had its own long lifespan.

She climbed the stony hill locally called Moss Rocks and sat with her back against a warm outcropping, looking far out to sea. Shooting stars and bleeding hearts grew in clumps as lovely as any garden, and she was surprised to find both pink and creamy late erythroniums still blooming as well. And nodding onion, long-spurred violets, a tall blue flower which Ann told her was camas, and the sweet-scented Nootka rose. Once, as she sat among the rocks, she had watched two tiny lizards mating in a dry cleft and found herself weeping at the beauty of it, the long dignity of their effort.

For a time, she avoided newspapers. She did not want the raw numbers of losses, the small triumph of a victory in the Ypres salient. She wanted to keep the one thing she knew about the war clear in her mind so she could examine it from every angle.

Sometimes on her walks, Flora entered Beacon Hill Park and stood on the highest point where the wind blew almost always. The early summer plantings were blooming. Ducks were on the ponds with their young behind them in untidy processions. Beautiful Garry oaks stood in groupings on mossy rises; willows overhung the water. Flora discovered one pond with several water lily plants holding the chalices of their yellow flowers above the water. If she got close enough, she could see the stigmas like small umbrellas and the flies at work underneath. It was an unexpected moment to remind her of Watermeadows and she returned with Grace in her pram to have the solace of familiar flowers and ducks.

Dr. Alexander stood on the step, tidy as ever, his hair brushed (hat in hand), tie neatly arranged, small wire-framed spectacles magnifying the blue of his eyes (Gus's eyes). He held a package.

“Flora, this has arrived. I've read it only long enough to know that it belongs with you, though I should like to be able to borrow it occasionally. Will you let me hold Grace while you look at it?”

Flora took him around to the back garden, to chairs arranged by the little pool, and handed her child to its grandfather. She looked at the cover of the book he had given her and then at him.

“I was of two minds. It will upset you, I know, but you will want to know its contents as well. It is Gus's journal, you see, sent by the lieutenant in charge of his platoon. At first they had no idea it was his, then one of his mates read it during a leave and knew at once.”

It was a green cloth-covered book, stamped with Canadian Pocket Diary on the cover. Inside was his name, his regiment, and a note: If found, return to Dr. Robert Alexander, St. Charles Street, Victoria, British Columbia. Flora's hands trembled as she held it.

“I will look at it a little later, I think. Shall I bring tea to the garden? It is too lovely a day to be inside—and Grace's pram is just around the corner. If you hold her, I will bring it here. Oh, Ann, how lovely—I was just going to bring out a tray.”

Ann appeared through the trellised gateway with a japanned tray holding a pot of tea and cups, a little dish of lemon slices, and a plate of thin ginger biscuits. She put it on the wicker table and exchanged a few words with Dr. Alexander, who was cradling the drowsy infant in his arms. Flora went through the motions of pouring tea, offering lemon, biscuits, with the chilling knowledge that Gus's journal was waiting for her.

“There is a packet of letters apparently that will come later on. Mostly from you, I would think, though his mother and sister also wrote. And some other items of a personal nature. Clothing, I think, and . . .”

His voice broke and he stopped, took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

“Excuse me, my dear. And a penknife, with his initials. I know the one because I gave it to him myself, for his twelfth birthday. It had been my father's, who was called Alastair, and it seemed particularly fortuitous that Gus had the same initials. Lovely bone handle and a blade that held an edge.”

“It must have been the knife he used to . . . oh, this will sound peculiar but it was so appropriate to the place and the moment. Please don't think of your son, of me, as cruel or macabre, but Gus cut the lower part of the jaw off a deer skeleton that we found in a place we liked to ride to, a box canyon near Walhachin. It had been scoured by weather and insects and was quite clean. Lovely really, like ivory. He said it would be an anchor he would take with him to the war, something to keep him mindful of home. Anyway, he used a pretty knife to do that particular thing. You should know how careful he was with the knife. He kept it very clean and oiled; it was always in his pocket. It obviously meant a great deal to him.”