The Governor of the Northern Province (5 page)

“You mean to say, Jennifer, that they don't study at least
Romeo and Juliet
in grade ten English anymore?” Hortense asked, nudging a fork and napkin closer to Jennifer's unused plate and then nestling the final cake onto her doily.

“No, Miss Spillway. Only the one about the Jew who went around asking people about his prick and blood and pound of flesh.”

Now Jennifer wanted to show Miss Spillway that she could do like civilization. She went to her task of portioning off just a little corner of the new cake with her fork. Extracting a wedge, she plugged it into her mouth, where it dissolved with Eucharistic solemnity, her jaw clamped for politeness. Meanwhile Miss Spillway was coughing up a cakey hairball at Jennifer's Elizabethan paraphrase. Neither woman was optimistic that this thing would go on. She can only fail at this, each thought of the other. Jennifer decided that she should give up, slam the rest of the cake into her maw and forget about someday addressing Parliament. She should just go home and wait for her father to come in from burning up stalks from this year's fallow field and have supper and dishes and folding the laundry with her mother and maybe a few hands of Hearts before bed if they're feeling like it and then, at most, a Revenue Canada information counter position in accord with the suitable-careers profile her guidance counsellor had given her, which would be but the penultimate stop on her way to an unremarkable, to a regular, to a Canadian death. No.

She passed Hortense a napkin for the cake bits still coming up. With this, an honest, secret look passed between them. Of mutual need. Their schedule of Saturday morning tea and books was thus confirmed as being so necessary to both as to be acceptable beyond crammed mouths and a little spit-up.

As summer in the Ottawa Valley beat on, Jennifer grew to like their weekly two-hour conversations, the cubes of sugar arranged beside stacks of shortbread, the oval platter set on the knee-high table between them. She listened and watched Hortense weave together tea cosies, creative autobiography, marmalade tins, and the storylines and characters of
Middlemarch
and
Anna Karenina
. She was gaining far more than the how and what of fine books here. Because smarts and book knowledge in general she was already getting at night by ploughing the encyclopedia. (She was currently on the Rs, finished with Rasputin, Richelieu, Robespierre, and presently on the second Roosevelt.) Tea with Hortense was, for Jennifer, her face-to-face preparation to be close by the real hard power of the world. Of knowing how many bites should be taken to finish a tea sandwich, the number of times a butter knife could respectably pass over a scone, the proper interval between mouthfuls during an interesting conversation. Of knowing, after more than one attempt, how to dispatch an outraged housefly trapped against a window screen without gucking up one's palm.

She sensed that these tutorials would only help her when she made it to those places that Hortense, in her small quiet rooms, could only puppet. Receiving lines and cocktail hours and drop-ins and dinner parties. Before getting her hands on these, Jennifer needed to practise a more basic human science, the humming at the top of the throat and the anglepoise of head and brow that conveyed interest on the leader's part in the voter's humanity. She had gleaned as much from the politics books. Especially from the pictures of LBJ. With Hortense, Jennifer was developing that sense of when to lean in and ask a further question, when to sit back and ruminate on an observation. Her broad shoulders would crowd everything else out, but the effect, after much practice on Hortense, was less suffocating than beguiling, because Jennifer was fast developing a great blankness of face that was poised to fold into whatever—shared concern, shared excitement, shared outrage, shared admiration—the interlocutor's tone and looks needed. All of which were necessary to the
sine qua non
of her political training, which Bokarie had likewise trafficked in by the time they met: to make those whom she depended on for what success she could get depend on her even more to get theirs.

Jennifer thought she was doing very well, so far, with Miss Spillway, who was made to feel that she was coming into her prime with the girl. Hortense discovered unknown powers of persuasion and instruction as Jennifer was refined over the summer, soon dropping the
s
from
anyways
and eventually remembering to hold back her braids while leaning over the pots of jam to ask a follow-up question. In the near corner of the family pew of a Sunday, Hortense would regret being so cheap with her charity when the poor hulking thing had first come to her in her library, and then she would commend herself on the enhancement she was effecting. Rapturously unaware of what was coming up and around her grandmother's bone china.

Everything was building towards the great unveiling that was to occur that August, when Jennifer was to accompany Hortense to a performance of
The Tempest
that the Community Players were doing in Centennial Park. For which, boldly breaking the summer hiatus, Hortense had written out invitations to members of the Hoarfrost Romantics on her Crème Anglaise stationery. This had been left over from when she had sent notes to friends and family in gratitude for their prayers and casseroles and concerns when her parents had passed on.

Please you, draw near. You are cordially invited to un petit déjeuner sur l'herbe with Ms. Hortense Spillway and her blossoming young friend, Miss Jennifer Ursula Thickson. Centennial Park, August 25, 2ish. Tea and The Tempest will be served.

RSVP regrets only

Impressed by the heaviness of the paper and curious about Hortense's new friend, all the members of the reading group called to say they were coming.

To round out Jennifer's training in advance of the performance, they had read the play and discussed it on the previous Saturdays. Hortense further encouraged Jennifer with the pronunciation of certain French cheeses that were to be served, and she helped her practise clever and thoughtful observations for presentation. Their attempt to read aloud particular exchanges from the play, however, was unsuccessful. There had been some disagreement over roles. Over who would be Prospero and who would play Caliban.

On the appointed date, Hortense was feeling like a grand lady of theatre. She had even purchased, from the Bay, no less, an expensively in-season sun hat, whose Upper Canadian austerity she offset by affixing a spray of lilacs to the band. When they met in Centennial Park, Hortense was satisfied and relieved to see Jennifer arrive un-plaited, her hair held round her head by the paisley kerchief the librarian had given her. Which was ostensibly a going-away gift, but was in fact intended to deter that mesmerizing and unseemly habit Jennifer had of twirling her braids when thinking, listening, watching. Which, Hortense knew, would be a judgment on herself when the others descended onto their quilt to consider what she'd created. Forged, of sorts.

Jennifer was feeling top-heavy, waiting in the park as it grew to half full in the hour before the performance. It was because her hair, no longer clamped and braided on either side but bandaged back by the librarian's gift, felt as if it was tugging her face up over her head. But it did make it easier, she would later notice, to smile and raise her eyebrows at the same time, in response, say, to an interesting observation about climate or to a personal story of hardship. When the others arrived, Hortense placed Jennifer in the rough centre of the picnic spread. Like a dressed-up game bird. The tins of cheese and olives and crackers and fruit and bony women and smiling women and nibbling women were schooling around her. Jennifer started feeling all this swirl and attention, and also the tea they were drinking. Hortense had delicately emptied a Niagara Valley VQA into a Thermos in the parking lot. Heart going fast with the scandal of it while pouring out the cups, she had giggled through her nostrils that afternoon tea was courtesy of Stephano and Trinculo.

“Who were responsible for getting the poor monster Caliban drunk didn't they Miss Spillway but then really what man, drunk or otherwise, isn't a monster I wonder. Of an occasion now and then,” Jennifer fired on cue, and was pleased with the nodding and murmuring she caught from the women around her. As was Hortense, who was now whispering for approval to Faye, the de facto Hoarfrost hostess because she alone had a husband and a real sitting room. Hopeful of earning a private dinner invitation, Hortense was telling Faye, arrayed as ever in her Timothy Eaton finery, how far Jennifer had come. The poor girl had called sugar cubes “mare candy” a mere eight weeks ago.

Jennifer was watching the librarian talk to this woman. Who seemed, by comparison with Miss Spillway, less straw than stalk. She had more and better meat on her bones, but also a presiding way to her. Jennifer sensed here something suggestive of power. Perhaps it was how she smiled such evident dental coverage and waved at other members of the audience on nearby quilts, who seemed anxious to catch her eye. Who, Jennifer also noticed, whispered among themselves afterwards, a little flushed.

Meanwhile, the little wine she'd taken, along with the gym-sock whiff of the soft cheeses and the general atmosphere—the black-shirted men and women pulling and pushing thrones and canoes across the stage, the Hoarfrost women comparing their summer reading lists and estate sale linen finds—all of this gave off a great swelling and excitement. Bravely, she had breached a new world, and for this, she decided, chewing on a little squishy brie rind, Miss Spillway was to be thanked. But then the performance began.

Good boatswain, have care. Where's the master? Play the men.

That was all she could recall from the first few acts. Because Jennifer spent them studying Faye and resenting Miss Spillway for how she had done the seating, plopping Jennifer in the middle, like an Easter ham or something. So far from her. From Faye. Who sipped her cup and nodded with such relaxed, vacant intelligence while Hortense and the other women bubbled around her with clever observations and curious facts. A woman who could do her better than forks and fairy tales.

She started moving at the intermission, when Stephano exited stage left after his scene-ending declaration, which was received with much Port-A-John-ready applause.

O brave monster! Lead the way.

Hortense could feel the pressure on her hat, her shoulders, and now coming around in front as Jennifer circled and sat down, close in on Faye. Jennifer's blank face was expectant, her nose distending. Everything smelt sweet and low-slung with the flower-busted fullness of Faye's husband-gifted perfume, with this musk of proximate, blooming power. Waiting to be introduced, Jennifer undulated her fork across and beneath and overtop her fingers, which Hortense noticed with middling approval. This, Hortense held, was better than doing it with the braids but seemed a little too close to fancy card-table manners. But still, Hortense thought, the wine opening her up a little, look how far this girl, otherwise consigned to the dustbin of a small-town country's history, had come with her! So she fixed her hat, Dalloway- and Prospero-proud of the absolute masterpiece she had brought off.

“Oh yes, I'm so sorry, Jennifer. What with all the commotion of our little picnic, I didn't introduce the two of you before the play started. Faye, this is Miss Jennifer Ursula Thickson, who promises much. Jennifer, this is Mrs. Faye Gallagher. She's Alderman Gallagher's wife. Speaking of women and politics, perhaps she could—”

The last words anyone of importance ever heard from Hortense Spillway.

3

ROAD APPLES

I.

Into the bins behind his store, Bokarie tossed the bottles that his new countrymen called recycling. Often they knocked and slid and broke, and this gave him a mixed-up feeling. He didn't like this sound, this having to think again on his past, this incursion from over there.

Mostly children brought the bottles to his counter, and by the armload during the summer months. As instructed by his manager, he dispensed to each clutching, grabby hand a predetermined catch of coins in accord with however many bottles were presented. There was such precise largesse in Canada. Bokarie also thought this while palming the monstrous apples at the grocery store and studying the Bible-thick channels guide for the television.

Some of the bottles that were given to him in his new country had busted-up cigarettes at the bottom; others, the sweet ones, usually had a few ants. There were also muddy bottles, which were brought in by the older boys. Bokarie learned that they had fearlessly gone by Little Caitlin's Creek and snatched them by their floating, idling necks. That's what it was called now. Little Caitlin's Creek. And, encouraged by its reputation, they had even come back once with a rusted-out shopping cart, as they now boasted to Bokarie. But the owner of the greengrocery had been too suspicious of starting an epidemic of theft and recovery to offer anything in return.

A band of town children and a few of the younger teenagers who frequented his store adopted Bokarie as something of a mascot during his first summer in Canada. Having studied his schedule, they would meet him around back in the alley with the Dumpsters and recycling bins when he was tossing the bottles. He had a sense of how it would look if such ice-cream-sticky, mustard-crusted hands got cut up, so he wouldn't let them throw any of the bottles despite their offers of help. Instead, he occasionally made a show of flipping a bottle into a high spinning arc, and received impressed noises in recompense. He liked that.

II.

Bokarie's first Canadian picture, not including his asylum and refugee identification shots, appeared on the front page of the local newspaper on the Monday after the Little Caitlin memorial rally. It was pleasing to carry this stack into his store. The picture was taken just after he concluded his inaugural speech to his new fellow countrymen, and the accompanying caption reprinted what was arguably the most emotive bit of his remarks.
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice
. Many in the crowd assumed he had been addressing some ancient river god, to whom he was lamenting the unfairness of Little Caitlin's loss. He was smiling and showed jagged teeth and grape-black gums. Large, blond and sort of smiling as well, Jennifer was close beside him. Her presence in the town was growing of late. She was now the mobilizing force behind the successful Little Caitlin Fund. Yet she still received little in the way of further consideration. She remained a Thickson whose heavy ankles and small farm family were reinforcing barriers against greater success. For Bokarie, however, the newspaper photo was evidence he was becoming one of them.