Lily's Story (66 page)

“
With John and
Stewie off workin’ for the Great Western in Sarnia an’ Peg married
to that no-good-nick
chauffeur
, I only got
but three left home myself. But if we don’t let go of ’em, they let
go of us.”

Lily gave in. After
driving the truant officer off her place with a broom and then
sitting for an hour in the privy before she stopped shaking, Lily
said yes, and in the spring of 1877, two months before his fourteen
birthday, Robbie left school for good. Mr. Redmond, true to his
word, gave Robbie a part-time job on the delivery wagon. When Lily
suggested that he might rent the wagon to deliver laundry as well,
he stared at her with a resentment that dumbfounded and then cut
deeply. She saw the word of assent on his lips but recovered in
time to say, “Never mind, really, it was a silly idea.” Relief
flooded his face but did not wash away the other, darker emotion.
At least he has a friend, she thought, watching him dash off
towards the Potts’ house, trying not to resent in her own fragile
way the hundreds of sleepless nights and restless afternoons she
had already spent worrying – wondering when and if he would come
home, and what new bruise he would have to camouflage in the coming
days: any healing words of expiation or remorse stitched like scars
in his throat. They spoke little now beyond the brief courtesies of
the day. Moreover, Robbie and his brother seemed merely to coexist,
chillingly polite in her presence. I am losing them, she thought
one day in her desperation. The more I love them and want them to
be themselves, the worse it gets. How can that be? If not love,
then what?

When Brad came down with
pneumonia in the terrible winder of 1877-78, she sat at his bedside
night after night cooling him with iced cloths, steadying with her
own strength the terror that flickered in his eyes as he began for
the first time perhaps to question his own immortality, to doubt
the voices prophesying glory to the credulous. Often when she fell
into a doze in her chair, she would rouse to his soft moans and
find Robbie across from her cupping his brother’s flaxen head in a
hunter’s hand and spooning fresh soup onto those limp poet’s lips.
Lily closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. After a while she
heard the low murmur of their little-boy voices. If not love, she
thought, then nothing. That’s all I know.

3

L
ike most
relationships in the alley the one that developed between Lily
Marshall and Sophie Potts over the depression years was marked by
both intimacy and independence. Whenever Lily felt down or in need
of company, she would slip over to Sophie’s place where, summer or
winter, the iron stove crackled and the kettle whistled. Without
knocking she would slide into the rambling kitchen where ‘her
chair’ would be waiting. Likewise, Lily would often look up from
her scrubbing, bathed in steam, and gradually make out the ample
silhouette of her neighbour fixed to the old rocker by the south
window. If Sophie were busy – cajoling Duchess’ farrow towards
plumpness, doing her own never-quite-finished laundry with a
bare-bottomed Bricky hopping behind her, or hacking at her garden
lathered in sweat and cursing the ill-fortune that made her soil
the most arable in the Alley – then Lily would simply make herself
a cup of tea, talk to Wee Sue or play cat’s cradle for Bricky.
Sometimes she would just sit and let the myriad little dramas of
the Potts’ household absorb her interest and draw her gratefully
away from herself for that one hour she needed to recuperate or to
become aware once again that there existed other lives, other acts
of caring and slight and needing-more-love-than-there-was-anywhere.
If Sophie were about to go out on an errand, she would nod at Lily
– usually – and then simply disappear down the lane. No offense was
meant or taken. In the summer Lily might hear the cries of Sophie’s
youngest ones, and pulling Brad out of his chair, drop her
scrub-board and head up the path towards the beach with towels and
swimsuits in hand until they caught up with the Potts’ clan,
already augmented by several McLeods and Shawyers. Lily would fall
in beside Sophie, who pitched and yawed in the sand, and together
they would lead the children down to the water, certain that they
had established a bond for the long, lazing afternoon. It was only
on holidays and other rare occasions that formal plans were made to
picnic or go skating on the flats or sledding over the dunes. In
the Alley it was better to let things happen. Somehow word was
passed along as needed, movements were detected by some inner
radar, random sound was read with the clarity of print. Here, a
pact was signed without recourse to clause or declaration, and
rarely broken, and yet the independence of each participant was
re-established as soon as the hour or afternoon or safari was
complete. It was as if, not having any legal claim to their
property, they chose to guard themselves – their time, feelings,
rights, dreams – with double the zeal of any mere
ratepayer.

For example, Lily knew
that two days before Stoker came home for his three-day layover in
the summer or week’s rest-and-recreation in winter, she could not
engage Sophie in anything but the most superficial conversation.
Even then Sophie might lash out at her or cuff little Bricky
without cause as her anticipation took full possession of her –
with its eccentric blend of fear and longing. And when Stoker did
waltz up the lane, braying out some bawdy sailor’s song loud enough
to alert the entire Alley of his arrival and his territorial
imperative, Lily knew enough to stay away and mind her own business
no matter what concatenation of squeals, groans and leathery
collisions breached the night air. In the Alley no one interfered.
Lily did not speak five words to Morton Potts in five years. She
saw him only from a distance – bare-chested in the sun, sleeping
off a hangover on his verandah, tilting after his little ones in
some mock fable he was the ogre in, roaring out loud as they
squealed with laughter and scampered away at will. As far as Lily
could see, Stoker was either shaken by uncontrollable hilarity or
he was comatose. What she knew of him she heard from Sophie who
spoke of nothing else for three days after his departure – until
she had exorcised whatever demons had driven them both through
these furloughs of ecstasy and retribution. Always she would
downplay the bruises on her arms and neck – even though no one ever
remarked upon them. “The tokens of love, Lil,” she would sigh.
“When you marry a lumberjack and a stoker, you gotta expect some
rough lovin’.” Then she would roll her eyes theatrically to mask
any feelings she might let free, and say without fail: “As my old
granny always said, you can’t make a primrose out of a preacher’s
arse.” Then she would manufacture a belly-laugh that Boadicea might
have borrowed to stymie Caesar’s waves.

Monday afternoons were
reserved for tea at Hazel’s, but of course there were no
invitations and an absent guest was under no obligation to explain
or justify. Most of the regulars arrived, feigned surprise at the
sight of the pewter tea-service and sweetcakes, and stayed to chat.
Sophie was almost always present – except when Stoker was at home –
as was Lily, yet they never walked up the lane together by design,
and often returned according to their own schedule. When they did
share the walk home, they might well continue a discussion begun
earlier or simply stroll silently along, happy in one another’s
company. Hazel had two favourite topics – local gossip and politics
whenever it could be reconstrued as local gossip. With the constant
comings-and-doings of many powerful but undertitillated gentlemen
through her portals and bedsteads, the latter bit of legerdemain
was not too difficult. Shadrack Lincoln, the mute, was often seen
reading the radical newspapers – abandoned by the clientele in
their haste to pursue less intellectual delights – but he could not
contribute to the debates except by grunting approval or disgust or
occasionally, when his frustration built to a point where no other
release was possible, by scribbling upon the schoolboy’s slate Lily
had brought for him one day (Stewie had ‘forgot’ to return it when
he quit school). Sophie often dominated the political discussion
though no one knew where she acquired her extensive knowledge of
provincial and federal affairs. Her source of local ‘intelligence’
was well-known: every week or so and never on the same day twice in
a row, she waddled past the General Store in McHale’s where most of
the Alleyfolk shopped, and headed straight up the street to the
main concourse of stores and services, the hub of respectable
gossip and social interchange. Dressed in her orange smock or her
squirrel-fur with the heads attached and chattering – according to
season – Sophie paddled her way blithely upstream, deliberately
fixing victims in her wicked sights and greeting them with
boisterous familiarity. The ladies of the town had no choice but to
respond: she was too large and garrulous, and besides she knew more
about them and had seen more of their flesh-and-blood than they
themselves had. It was in these brief shell-shocked exchanges that
vital information was spilled into public view, or in the longer
conversations that Sophie-the-Wise carried on with the
storekeepers, who genuinely liked her and much appreciated the stir
she made among the village hens and their imperturbable
pecking-order. It took days for the dust to settle. Once, after
Sophie had lampooned the Prime Minister for two-and-a-half acts
(“He’s got a voice like a crow with the palsy!”), Shadrack motioned
Lily over to his corner and pointed at the words on his slate: ‘I
give her the papers every week’.

“
No wonder
this country’s in a depression. Every one of you thought with old
Alex up there in Ottawa we’d all be shittin’ shamrocks. Now don’t
get me wrong – Alex’s a good man, got a heart as big as a squash –
but he’s got the brains of a stonecutter and he’s as straight-laced
as they make ‘em. Wouldn’t say poop if his tongue got tangled in
it.” She paused for effect or breath, then said “Every muscle in
that man’s body is stiff as a steel poker – ’ceptin’ the one that
oughta be!” Her cackle shook Hazel’s hens out of their four-o’clock
drowse.

When Lily got to know
Sophie well enough, she asked her why she had given up being a
midwife. Sophie gave various answers depending on her mood – “Too
many of them damn quacks from the university tellin’ me what I
didn’t need to know,” or “All the women out there want the doctors
anyway, why should I fight it,” or “I gave it up in ’sixty-five
just a little after your Brad was born – I could see the writin’ on
the wall, I was just a woman with not a shred of schoolin’ to my
name,” or “Women feel safer with a man rummagin’ around down there,
they’re used to it!” – but finally one morning after Stoker had
left, she sat bathing the cut on her cheek by the stove and
confessed to Lily that Stoker had ordered her to give it up because
he said it interrupted their brief times together and “he accused
me of neglectin’ my own kids for the sake of other people’s. He
said I was a piss-poor mother. What could I say, I was already
pregnant with precious little Bricky, our love child. What could I
say, Lil?”

So it was that the women of the
village had to rely upon the distant charity of the Sarnia doctors
several miles and sometimes desperate hours away. Mildred McLeod,
the youngest of the McLeod servant-girls, got herself pregnant (“By
immaculate conception, it appears,” Sophie whinnied), and one night
near her time, Lily was awakened by a savage scream that sounded as
if some cat was being flayed alive under her window. She hurried
through the dark down to the source of the agony and met Sarie
McLeod with her gray hair fanned around her face like a shriek and
not one word in her wild eyes.

“
Calm down,
Sarie,” Lily said, trembling all over. “Has the doctor been sent
for?”

“
Hours ago,
hours ago,” Sarie mumbled at last and could find nothing better to
say for some time. Lily was thinking: these screams will wake the
whole lane, Sophie will hear them and come down. But she didn’t.
Lily went in to the stricken girl and before she realized what she
was doing, she was giving orders to young Kathleen and Frieda and
soothing Mildred who was suffering more from terror than pain. Lily
whispered into her ear the things she remembered being told herself
by the
sage-femme
who had brought her comfort in her
own labour. She found her palm resting on the girl’s spasming belly
like a benediction of some sort, and though she had little idea of
what she was supposed to feel there or actually do, she soon had
Mildred relaxing between contractions, turning her fawn’s gaze up
at the visiting angel, and inhaling deeply when she was told.
Behind her, preparations for the event itself seemed to have fallen
into place as they would have if Sarie, exhausted by one-too-many
of these melodramas, had not panicked and sent the household into
chaos. Moments later Dr. Dollard arrived, himself exhausted from
twenty hours on the road, and together he and Lily gave nature a
brief assist and the child nosed its way into the world. It had not
occurred to Lily, or anyone else, to go up to Sophie’s –
Sophie
had
heard, and once that fact was known,
nothing else could be done. That was the way it was in Mushroom
Alley.

Word spread
beyond the Alley, however, and during the middle years of the
Liberal regime Lily was called out into the village proper to
‘assist’ Dr. Dollard in the safe delivery of six or seven babies.
Along her own lane she guided another McLeod, a McCourt and a brace
of Shawyers into the waiting air, occasionally before the arrival
of the harried doctor. Lily described each trauma in detail to
Sophie, and Sophie felt not the least embarrassment in commenting
and dealing out advice. Or in reminiscing about her own glory days:
“So there I am washin’ the blood an’ muck off the baby’s
bot
tom, an’ Missus Christie
perks up and says to me, ‘do it look like it’s Da?’ and I says ‘I
can’t tell, dearie, I ain’t seen your hubbie with his pants all the
way down yet!’” When the baker’s daughter, Fanny Saltman, gave
birth to a foetus so deformed that Dr. Dollard didn’t even try to
smack breath into its misery, and when Fanny died later that day
with her eyes open and the sunlight streaming over the bed, Lily
told Dr. Dollard that she couldn’t help out any more. And she
didn’t, though she lived in dread that some female scream would
jolt her awake some night and she would have no choice. It never
did. “You got the brains for it an’ the heart,” Sophie had
predicted, “but not the stomach.” The closest Lily ever came to
discovering what might have happened the night Sophie did not come
down to McLeod’s, was when she suggested that Sophie return to the
service as it was obviously needed, even if she could only do it in
the winter months when Stoker was away for six weeks at a
stretch.