Lily's Story (76 page)

A
ll of the Potts’
children were present except for Fred, whose whereabouts were
unknown, and Marlene. What rearrangement of loyalties and patterns
of retribution were to take place among them over the coming months
Lily knew little about and could not bring herself to care. At the
inquest a few weeks later, Sophie’s death was ruled accidental.
Stoker was the only witness called since he was the only one who
had seen the unfortunate fall. If I
had
been called, Lily
said to herself, what difference would it have made if I’d told
what I thought I knew? None at all. Stoker went off to the bush as
usual, but did not return in the spring.

Back at Hazel’s the evening
after the funeral, the Alleyfolk decided to hold a proper wake.
Baptiste Cartier brought in a supply of newly-minted hooch, Stewie
and John carted up a batch of Sophie’s own homemade beer, and Angus
Shawyer was kept sober long enough to play his fiddle. They might
as well have hauled in a dirge-drum and pounded it sepulchrally,
for no one danced, no one sang for fear they would weep: the
mourners collected in fragile clusters about the haunted rooms
where Sophie had presided so often, and whispered into the
gathering gloom stories that had once evoked irrepressible
laughter.

“
God damn it
to hell,” Hazel blurted out to staunch her pain, “what a shame,
what a rotten shame. All her life she lives on this Alley, she
slaps half the kids in this town on the bottom before they’re a
second old, she works an’ slaves to make a home for her family, an’
just a month before that home is about to become her own for keeps,
she up an’ dies. Not only that but she’s the one with the gumption
an’ the brains to give us all a chance at owning what’s ours. Now
where’s the justice in all of that, I wanna know?”

“
The Lord
moves in mysterious ways,” offered Stumpy.

“
Fuck the
Lord!” Hazel snapped.

Hazel’s lament set off a wave
of grumbling and apostasy and boozy self-pity.

“
A year from
now an’ she’ll be a nobody, forgot like all of us are the second
we’re outta mind,” sighed Winnie, snuffling and making a great fuss
over the silent, tearless Violet.

“
Damn
shame.”

“
But
true.”

“
It don’t have
to be.”

The parlour went quiet, as if
the corpse had slipped in and just been noticed. It was Lily
Marshall who had spoken, and the mourners were not listening so
much as watching.

“
I said it
don’t have to be true. About Sophie. There’s one way to make sure
the town remembers an’ to make sure nobody on this Alley ever
forgets what she done for us.”

“
What’re you
talking about, Lily?” Stumpy said because no one else seemed ready
to ask.

“
You all know
the council is gonna change the name of Prince Street to Prince
Edward Boulevard in January when we get to be a village. Then
they’re gonna hook it up with the Alley. I say we oughta suggest to
the Reeve that the whole street be called Potts’ Lane.”

The rightness of the suggestion
struck home. Murmurs of assent rose from all quarters, and one or
two defiantly whispered a call-to-arms.

“
You think the
Reeve’ll go for this?” Stumpy said. “After the pressure we used on
him to get the land title? I’m afraid we’ve used up all our
tokens.”

Reluctant
, grumbling
assent to this.

“
We oughta
try,” Lily said. “We’re only askin’ for what’s fair.”

S
tumpy was appointed
sole legate for the task of broaching the question to the
Reeve-elect. He returned to inform a grim afternoon session of the
rump parliament that their request had not merely been denied but
ridiculed. Dowling’s words, as reported, were: “What in the name of
Satan makes you think this town would name its most sacred street
after a whoring, whiskey-peddling tub of blubber?” Or metaphors to
that effect.

Honeyman offered to stuff
the Reeve-elect down a suitable sinkhole and Spartacus brandished a
set of pliers capable of transforming him into a capon, but when
such displays of resolution and solidarity ended, Lily asked if she
might speak. Violet came and stood beside her and squeezed her arm
tightly.

“
We’ll get him
to change his mind,” Lily said into the awed quiet, and no one
doubted her word. They waited for her proposal.

“
Once the
Reeve’s made up his mind, he’ll get the council to do what he
wants. Now, I want Shadrack to write down the main points of a
story I know an’ then Stumpy’ll go to the Reeve an’ tell it to him.
When he hears it, he’ll change his mind.”

H
azel and Stumpy had
urged Lily to do the talking when they went to Dowling’s house but
she adamantly refused. “I can’t talk fancy,” she said, and held her
ground. The notes outlining the story were tucked into Stumpy’s
coat pocket. The story was one that Tom had told to Lily during the
first winter of their marriage as the hearth-fire blazed and her
lover did all things possible to make her laugh and see the world
through his eyes. Like all of Tom’s anecdotes, she recalled this
one word for word, detail for detail. The north-east wind blew a
dusty snow in their faces as they trooped up Victoria Street that
Tuesday morning: Stumpy ahead with his sailor’s amble, followed by
Hazel in her best hat, Maggie Shawyer, Honeyman Belcher and Lily.
Dowling must have spied them before his maid did because he was on
his verandah just as they wheeled through the gap in the hedge, a
white silk scarf tossed about his exposed throat.

“
I’ve heard
the last petition from you gang of rascals that I intend to hear,”
he shouted against the wind. “Take your causes henceforth to the
council and its official meetings. Be off before I call a
constable!” This latter remark was flung into the ear of Honeyman
Belcher as his two-hundred-pound bulk brushed Dowling aside and
barged through the front door. The others followed, and by the time
they had removed their galoshes and coats in the vestibule, the
shivering Reeve had decided to join them.

“
Five
minutes,” he snapped with his back to them, warming his hands by
the fire and absorbing most of its welcome. “Then it’s the
constable.”

“
This won’t
take five minutes,” Stumpy said. “We come to ask you to change your
mind about namin’ Potts’ Lane.”

“
Don’t call it
that!” he roared. “It’ll never have a name like that as long as I’m
reeve of this town. You’re wasting your breath. Go home to your
seedy little hovels. At least you
own
them, thanks to
me.”

Stumpy didn’t reply. He pulled
two sheets of paper out of his pocket, and when Dowling’s curiosity
was piqued, he said to him, “I brought along a story to help you
change your mind.”

A flicker of fear or animal
wariness passed across Dowling’s face but was quickly erased by a
belligerent ruffling of feathers. “What in hell are you talking
about?”

His hands shaking, Stumpy
started to recite the story as best he could from memory and the
blurred notes. The gist of it was this: nineteen years ago this
month the Great Western Railway held a gala ball in the armouries
at London and at that ball the well-known and beautiful wife of the
railroad’s vice-president was seen to dance more than once with a
handsome, young, dark-haired gentleman, also an officer of that
company. The lady returned to the watch of her husband as the
dancing ended, but several hours later she was observed, poorly
disguised in a coachman’s cape, entering a nearby hotel and without
a by-your-leave slipping up to the second floor and sailing into a
gentleman’s room without a knock. At six in the morning she was
spotted by a drayman skipping down the alley behind the
hotel.

From the first mention of the
month and year Dowling dropped his bully’s stance and started to
listen. By the time Stumpy had finished, Dowling’s face was an
impassive mask, closed to all secrets. He looked past Stumpy and
speared each of the others with a questing glance, but found
nothing he needed to know. Vaguely he recognized several of the
faces or figures but could attach no certain name to them, make no
connection between the narrative and this crew of outcasts.

“
A droll
story, I’m sure,” he said at last. “And a nasty one as well. Good
enough to smear the reputations of a dozen honest men.”

Stumpy’s jaw dropped, and he
heard the sag of confidence behind him. Desperately he wanted to
turn to Lily. He was both shocked and relieved to hear Hazel’s
voice, clear and cold.

“
London House,
October 31, 1859, room 218, the lady’s name reminds one of a
flower, her husband was –”

Dowling stared incredulously at
Hazel when he cut her off. “That’s enough.”

“
What you did
back then ain’t none of our concern,” Hazel said, “and won’t ever
be anybody else’s. We only come to ask you for what we think’s
fair.”

The Reeve-elect smiled at
her as if she were Dame Justice herself and he a lifelong servant
of the helpless blind. “Just so,” he said.

O
n January 1, 1879
Point Edward was officially incorporated as a village, and without
fanfare or the world’s notice quietly gave birth to
itself.

2

T
he first act of the
duly inaugurated village council was to pass a resolution declaring
the third Saturday of that month “Point Edward Day”, a motion that
was declared unanimous (until the principal form of celebration
turned out to be a dance, at which juncture there was a Methodist
retraction). The second motion, as Lily had predicted, was passed
with much grumbling dissent but no audible
nays
: the
extended street facing the River along its whole meandering length
was officially denominated “Potts’ Lane”. Even the Prince might
have approved, Lily thought.

The dance was held in the
newly-constructed Oddfellows’ Hall, an imperial edifice of brick
and mortar and mitred glass which stood at the edge of the
sprawling marsh below and beyond – as solid and respectable as a
redoubt or a medieval keep. Inside, though, it had been transformed
into a miniature, temporary Camelot. Against the starred January
dark that stiffened the myriad mercurial panes, crystal light
splashed from chandeliers or blazed defiance from ceremonial rushes
clamped to the north wall. That afternoon a soft snow had fallen
briefly, blessedly, and then the skies had been brushed clear of
configuring cloud by some moon-impelled wind just in time for
evening’s ascension. Anyone gazing down from that perspective would
have seen a village unmarked by tread or traffic of any kind, as if
its streets and alleys and byways had just been reinvented for the
occasion. By seven o’clock, though, there was not a path or passage
of any sort which did not bear the imprint of some one of its
citizens – and not one of these pointed anywhere but towards the
momentary heart of the village itself, and its communal,
celebratory beat.

The band was makeshift –
two fiddles, a squeeze-box, a battered army bugle and matching
drum, a lone asthmatic harmonica, undermined by assorted,
improvised percussives – but it was of local genesis and propelled
by an imperturbable optimism. Unfettered by sheet-music or
conductor’s baton, it poured out the latest waltz from old Vienna,
the jazziest lancers from the Buckingham Guard, the airiest jib
from Londonderry. At first the Alleyfolk – awed by the garish
ostentation of cutaway coat and puffed silk, and ever chary of
releasing even the smallest atom of their secret selves to public
scrutiny – huddled in clumps under the fiery rushes along the
windowless wall. Not one of them, despite the heat and press and
sweat, inched towards the crystal bowl beneath the main arch where
Reeve Dowling’s personal tangerine punch winked and rippled its
welcome (though Baptiste Cartier was observed passing an
unobtrusive jug of white vinegar from hand to hand among the most
reticent of the Alleymen). Then, without warning, during one of the
intermittent reels, the druggist’s son crooked an errant arm into
the waiting loop of Miss Shawyer’s elbow and swept her out of her
flock and out of the Alley and into the ages-old anonymity of the
reel itself. If it was a signal, it worked. If not, it worked
anyway. As the fiddles sizzled and sang their ancient solipsisms,
one by two and two by three the choruses in the wings of the great
hall emptied into its epicentre of sets and squares, where –
enthused by a music bereft of word and sign and the tautology of
time – they convened, divorced, colloquied, parted forever, resumed
at once, met and kissed goodbye, remembered and forgot their names:
Shawyer with Redmond, McCourt with Durham, burgher with ragpicker –
and only the character of the sexes (and of course the jig-tune
itself) remained constant and preserved and happily at
odds.

L
ily stood alone at
the open door. Behind her: the music and the fragmentary revels.
She peered west towards the Evening Star, just risen; towards the
River, iced tight, its winter’s-long scream cached and pulsing
blackfathoms beneath all hearing; towards the ragamuffin boys
skating out some ritual game on the frozen pond a few rods below
her. She listened to the crisp snub of their blades against any
resistance, the boasts and yelps and elbowing affection of their
careless buffoonery; and she knew that Rob and Brad somehow were
among them, or of them, Brad, most likely, crouched in a moon’s
halo and watching, weighing, reading the shadows and the shapes
under them; and Rob, inevitably, buffering headfirst into whatever
shoulder offered its challenge, and whooping, with the others, the
last and the loudest of their boyhood salvoes.