The Age of Water Lilies (6 page)

FIVE

1913

Mary was back at work within a week, quiet, her eyes dull. Her hands, so capable, seemed almost to carry within them the shape of a child, a damp head, the unbearable softness of shoulders. Flora and George had gone to the child's funeral, a strange affair in which the priest was almost the only person who spoke. The Indian people were silent, their faces closed and distant. Someone told Flora that the real ceremony would take place when all the white people had departed. Mourning songs would be sung, Grace's infant carrier would be hung in a tree with some of her belongings in it, Mary would cut her hair. Only the family and members of the Skeetchestn village would be welcome at this later ceremony.

And Flora regretted that she had only had the single encounter with Grace, remembering how the infant laughed and touched her face. She had dreamed of the baby afterwards, even made the little nightdress that might still, for all she knew, remain draped on the chair like a tiny ghost. How could a child die so quickly? And yet when she went to the cemetery at Skeetchestn for the child's funeral, she saw many small crosses to indicate the deaths of many babies. If she closed her eyes, she saw them lying under the earth in their flannel wrappings, as though asleep, and the weight of Grace on her lap, more warmth than anything, was something she could not forget.

It seemed frivolous to play croquet on the hotel lawn or to sit by the Marquis' pool with a glass of Pimm's Cup. So Flora spent a lot of time walking alone on the road to Ashcroft, though never arriving. She was watchful for snakes. She took a book to read in the orchard in late afternoon rather than drink tea with other women. A wind nearly always rose cool off the river; she would place her book on her chest and think of Grace.

A package arrived from Wiltshire containing a framed picture. It was an ink-and-wash sketch of Winsley, the village near her family home. It wasn't until she read her mother's accompanying note that she remembered doing the sketch herself.
You were about ten,
wrote her mother,
it was the summer that the young man from Cambridge came to tutor George in Greek as he was doing so poorly in his studies. He took the two of you on many outings, do you recall, and had you sketch scenes while he worked with George on passages from Thucydides. You gave me this one as a gift, but I thought you might like to hang it in your new home, where you can be reminded of Winsley.
”

And then Flora did remember, she remembered sitting on a bench by the turn in the road where the stone buildings leaned right to the edge of the road on the one side and where the vale fell down to the river on the other. She remembered trying to get both views into the sketch, not quite successfully, but the tutor had been pleased with her perspective and had encouraged her to apply soft washes of green (for the vale side) and yellow warmed with a tiny bit of red for the stone buildings (they were built of the mellow Bath stone that glowed in sunlight) when they returned home. Rose campion and deadnettle foamed on the roadside in the heat of the stone. She had done a pale wash of pink for those, even though the deadnettle had blossomed white. The feeling of the moment was caught—the heat (one of the buildings trembled a little, probably due to the unsteadiness of her hand using ink), the density of the plants, the uneven cobbling of the street between its two poles, one the natural water and fall of fields to the river, the other the work of man in stone and mortar. She had been exactly ten. The sketch was signed with her initials, and the date: 1901.

Flora had forgotten she could draw that well. Mostly what she did now were designs for needlework, but seeing her sketch, clumsy in a way but with a care and attention for particular detail, made her want to sketch again. She sent to Vancouver for three tablets of watercolour paper—she remembered that it held up well to the washes and the ink—and a tray of watercolours. Ink she had, and a variety of nibs. She would try to make a record of this house, these buildings, the slope of the hills on the other side of the railway tracks, tawny as buckskins, the jaunty angle of the flume coming down their flanks.

•  •  •

Word had come that the Indians were down on the river, fishing. The Footners told George that it shouldn't be missed, the sight of them taking the huge fish from the water, the women expertly cleaning and splitting them to spread them out on pole racks constructed of willow and red osier to catch the currents of air. There were horses all around, the sturdy native ponies staked out or hobbled while children played among them, followed by dogs, a chorus of magpies in the wild cherry trees near the water adding to the sound of voices, shouts as fish were lifted in big nets; there was the smell of cook fires as meals were prepared to feed the huge numbers of people congregated and the medicinal odour of smudges fending off pests as the fish cured. And thunder as the ponies were raced on the flats, dust following them in clouds. Now and then a child cried out as a bare foot encountered a cactus in the dry grass.

People from Walhachin had a fire of their own and, in the embers, roasted potatoes, some of them traded to Indians for the marvellous salmon, wind-dried and chewy. Someone played a fiddle, someone else an accordion, and others drifted over to listen or to stand with toes tapping while a few couples danced as the stars came out one by one. Flora felt a hand on her elbow.

“May I have this dance?” It was Gus, smiling his ironic smile.

It was a Hesitation Waltz, sweetly plangent in the cooling air. Flora kept her hand lightly on her partner's shoulder but felt his own hand tighten at her waist.

“I hoped we might ride together again,” he was saying. “I know that might be difficult to arrange, but if I am able to do so, would you come?”

Flora leaned back to look into his face. She thought of the beauty of his forearms with their golden hairs. It pleased her to think of them lightly touching her dress. He was still smiling, but there was something else, a look in his eyes; she felt it right down her spine and into her knees. She was suddenly a little weak.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Yes.”

•  •  •

It came about because her brother was busy. Too busy to think about a parcel that was waiting for him at a ranch near Savona. And Flora had been asking him if she might ride in that direction to explore a distant bench, to sketch aspens and late brown-eyed Susans. As it turned out, her brother told her, the reliable Gus Alexander had reason to ride to Savona, and she could accompany him, collect the parcel, and have some time to sketch. There was a brief argument about tacking up Vespa, the grey mare, with George saying with some irritation that he would do it and Flora insisting that she was capable of tacking up the horse she would be riding. George gave in, because he was so busy, and Flora put on her riding costume, caught Vespa easily, and led her to the stable, where she gave her a brushing and then slipped a bridle onto the horse's willing head, fastening the buckles, then placing the numnah, then saddle, onto the mare's back. She was fond of Vespa, who reminded her of the mare she'd left at Watermeadows, a dark bay Arabian, Seraphim, who had replaced the grey pony of her childhood. She'd ridden with her father; Seraphim was a strong-winded mount for hunting, bold enough to jump a watercourse. Vespa had something of the same ardent spirit. Flora buckled the girth loosely and led the mare out of the paddock to the shade at the front of the house to wait for Gus.

He appeared almost immediately, coming from the direction of the labourers' cottages, mounted on his calm gelding, Agate. Flora watched him approach, at ease in the saddle, almost like an extension of his horse. He jumped down and held both horses while Flora tightened the girth and mounted her mare.

“All set?” he smiled.

“I think so. I have this small rucksack only and George insists on a canteen.”

They were away, riding towards Savona. The day had not yet become as hot as it would and there was a breeze coming up off the river. Gus knew a route that was shorter than going by road and took them through a small gap in the red hills by the Deadman River.

“There's a place on this trail where I almost always see snakes. Tell me, Flora, have you ever seen a rattlesnake?” There was a twinkle in his blue eyes.

Flora shivered a little. “No, not really. I've seen their tracks in the dirt and I found a skin once, and of course I imagine I hear them every time I go walking alone, but I haven't actually seen one. I'd like to, though. At least, I think I would.”

“We'll leave the horses on the trail and just walk up into the rocks. Agate is the most reliable horse on earth—until he smells a rattlesnake.”

They dismounted, and Gus produced a rope, tying both horses to a single pine tree with a little shade. Then he took Flora by the hand and led her up the talus slope, taking each step carefully.

“There,” he pointed. “Look. Three of them, all asleep. That one on the far left is a young one. It doesn't even have rattles yet, just that little button at the tip of its tail. I think they're beautiful.”

And they were, Flora decided. Two of them were olive coloured and the young one was more tan. They all had dark brown blotches on their back, with lighter edges. There was something peaceful about the way they slept on the rocks. There was a smell, not unpleasant, like leaves or mushrooms. Gus murmured that it would be best to let sleeping snakes lie, and they quietly returned to their horses.

It seemed to Flora that Gus kept his hand on her back a little longer than necessary when he helped her to mount; the place where it had rested was very warm. For a moment she felt short of breath. When the young men in England had danced with her, their hands encircling her waist for the waltz, she had felt trapped. There was everything in the action, and nothing—a negotiation that had everything to do with land and the certainties of money and nothing to do with this feeling: a response the earth might make to wind, or sun. A little shudder, the passing of a shadow over the light skin of water.

It took a further hour to reach the ranch where George's parcel was waiting for him—books the rancher was lending him about soil health and grafting—and after a welcome glass of lemonade on the shady porch, they continued to the bench above Kamloops Lake where Flora wanted to sketch. They found a grove of pines, surrounded by a profusion of brown-eyed Susans, a fringe of aspens leading to the lake. Gus led the horses down for a drink and then found a place to tie them in shade with a long rope so they could graze on the sporadic bunchgrass. Flora took out the lunch she had stowed in her rucksack—cucumber sandwiches, a pot of Gentleman's Relish, a few of Mary's biscuits spread with anchovy paste—and they ate in the shade of a pine, Gus spreading his overshirt first for Flora to sit on. The view up the lake was spectacular, the long blue water still under the sun.

Flora dipped her pen into ink and began to draw the lake and its aspens. The sky in this country always gave her trouble. How to imply its enormity—you felt you could see forever!—and its changing moods made possible only by a drift of cloud or the thunderheads that frequently appeared in late afternoon only to disappear again almost immediately. Thicker lines for cloud, hatching for pines, a place where she used a pencil to indicate possible colours for the wash.

She realized Gus was watching her. She turned to him and began sketching his face on a fresh sheet of paper. It was beautiful, she thought—the strong nose, the well-spaced eyes, and his mouth. She examined it with her pen, the curve and the slight droop of the bottom lip. She paused at the chin, wanting to get the sense of how it jut forward, like a challenge. Before she knew it, he was kissing her. She had never been kissed. Oh, a peck on the cheek by her father or nurse, the Frenchman who brought special water lilies to her father and who kissed her hand, but never by a man whose mouth she had just drawn, whose arms had made her feel light-headed.

His mouth was luscious, like ripe strawberries. Taking his lips from hers, he whispered in her ear, “Do you mind, Flora? I've wanted to kiss you since I first saw you walking across your brother's orchard months ago, looking like a girl out of a painting.”

“Does it seem that I mind?” And they were kissing again.

•  •  •

It was a Saturday morning. Some of the orchardists were taking a day off, but the Chinese labourers were out in the orchards, hoeing the rows of potatoes between the small trees and making sure that bears had not damaged boughs, some of them propped with forked sticks. One orchardist had among his workers a couple, both Chinese, Song Lee and his young wife, May. The growing community had several businesses run by Chinese, one of them a laundry that was thriving. Song Lee came to Walhachin on his own from somewhere in the Fraser Valley. When his employer discovered he was married and that, unlike the other Chinese labourers, his wife lived not in China but with her parents in Vancouver, he gave Song permission to bring her to live in a tiny shack built of packing cases. She grew vegetables that she'd sell from a basket in front of her shack, a few chickens clucking nervously around her feet. When May first arrived, Flora bought early peas from her, a few lettuces, and some spring onions, and admired rows of tiny cabbage seedlings and the delicate ferny tops of carrots. May was a tiny woman with glossy black hair and a beautiful smile showing even white teeth. It was rumoured she was expecting a baby, though her slight frame revealed nothing. Or perhaps, thought Flora, the faintest swelling under her cotton jacket. It was so picturesque—the Chinese woman in her dark blue jacket surrounded by chickens, her baskets of vegetables looking exactly like a still life—that Flora went home for her Brownie camera and returned to take a photograph.

“May I take your picture?” she had asked, and after May shyly nodded, she snapped the pretty scene.

On that Saturday morning, when a young boy came running up from the orchards, shouting for help, Flora dropped her needlework and quickly intercepted him on the road.