A Sudden Sun (10 page)

Outside, the night sky was black and the air cool and bracing. Only Abby seemed to have any spirit left. “Out ’til after midnight!”
she said, squeezing Lily’s arm. “What a lark! Don’t worry, we can slip in through the servants’ door. I’ve promised Sadie a pair of silk stockings if she keeps quiet.”

Lily watched as the women moved away in twos and threes, stepping into waiting carriages, disappearing into the night without calling goodbyes to each other, as though they had not even the spirit left to be civil. “What happens in the morning?” she said, falling into step beside Abby. “You’ve sent a message saying we’re at my house. What will your mother think when we come down to breakfast in the morning in your house?”

“Silly Lily, always worrying,” Abby said. “You read the Bible so much, don’t you know ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’? Tomorrow will look after itself. I’ll be sure to think of something.”

T
HE DAY AFTER the vote in the House of Assembly, Lily walked home from Abby’s house where, as Abby had predicted, Mrs. Hayward was already out by the time they rose and did not question at which house the girls had spent the night. Back at her own home, Lily found her own mother lying down with a damp cloth over her eyes. She asked in a faint voice whether Lily had had a nice time at Abigail’s. It seemed the deception had worked perfectly.

But to what end, Lily wondered. She had deceived her parents, gone somewhere Papa would never have approved, believing she was there to watch history unfold. Instead she had listened to learned and wealthy men talk about women and their place in the home. Mrs. Ohman, Mrs. Peters, and Lady Thorburn, who had all seemed so strong and confident when speaking at Temperance Hall, were reduced to chidden little girls. It scarcely even mattered that fourteen men had voted in favour of the motion: once the bill was defeated it felt as if every man in Newfoundland had told the ladies to stay in their place and keep silent.

In the early afternoon, Mrs. Ohman came to Lily’s front door.
She gestured to her carriage, pulled up in front of the Hunts’ door. Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Withycombe, and Martha Withycombe were inside. “Come for a drive with us,” she said. “Disappointment shared is disappointment halved, I’ve always believed.”

“Last night’s vote will set back the cause of temperance ten years,” said Mrs. Withycombe as the carriage rolled down King’s Bridge Road.

“Not to mention the cause of women’s emancipation,” said Mrs. Peters.

Mrs. Withycombe frowned. “Well, perhaps if the members of the Assembly hadn’t got the idea that we were going to push for the full franchise next, they would have been more eager to give us the vote in the local option. That’s what frightened them off, and now we’re farther behind on our true cause.”

“Perhaps we’re not entirely in agreement on what our true cause is,” said Mrs. Ohman.

“Now, now,” said Mrs. Peters. “It does no good to quarrel among ourselves, does it, ladies?”

Both Mrs. Ohman and Mrs. Withycombe subsided into unhappy silence. The carriage rolled along the rutted roads. Mrs. Ohman unfolded her copy of yesterday’s
Evening Telegram
and rattled its pages as she read. The
Telegram
was the government paper and was unsympathetic to the women’s cause. A column in its pages had recently made reference to the “inane and hysterical criticism of those women’s rights agitators in the columns of the strong-minded
Water Lily
.” Needless to say, Mrs. Ohman preferred the
Evening Herald
, but she liked to keep a sharp eye on the opposing view as well.

All at once she gasped sharply. “Oh, monstrous! This is terrible!”

“What is it?” Mrs. Peters asked. The paper had come out yesterday evening while they were all in the House of Assembly; there would be no mention in it of last night’s debate.

“A letter—an infamous letter! Do any of you know anything about this?”

She read the letter aloud. It was from an anonymous member of the WCTU addressing the question “Should Women Sit in the House of Assembly?” The author’s answer was a resounding no.

“‘Besides the duties of a true and faithful wife’—that part is in bold type, by the way, ‘there is a more sacred trust given to them, a trust which is every true woman’s ambition to attain, that of a mother’,” Mrs. Ohman read.

“But we never asked for women to sit in the House—much less said women shouldn’t be wives and mothers!” Martha burst out.

“No, dear, but once the spectre of the women’s vote, even on a single issue, is raised, every man in the Assembly believes women will run for office next,” Mrs. Withycombe said. “Which is why we must be so careful not to give the wrong impression.”

Mrs. Ohman continued reading the letter, which ended, “It must be obvious to all right-thinking people that the instant woman becomes independent of man for her support and protection, the collapse of the whole social system is at hand.”

“All right-thinking people, indeed!” snorted Mrs. Peters, taking the paper from Mrs. Ohman. “This can’t be genuine! The editors of the
Telegram
must have written this, to make it appear as if we are not united in our cause.”

“But we are
not
united, are we?” Mrs. Ohman said, shooting a glance at Mrs. Withycombe. “I would not say that anyone
here
would be so disloyal as to send such a letter to the public press, but the sentiments are ones that we have all heard some of our members—including you, Mrs. Withycombe—express.”

“I hope you are not accusing me of writing letters to the paper!”

Suddenly the carriage seemed very crowded. Lily’s former pleasure at being included in this elite gathering of temperance women evaporated. The carriage was rolling past the Pleasantville
cricket grounds; the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake lay broad and inviting on the other side.

Mrs. Peters followed her glance. “Oh, have your driver stop and let’s get out and walk for a bit,” she said to Mrs. Ohman. “It’s a lovely day and I think we all need the exercise—at least, I know I do.”

“Quite right,” said Mrs. Ohman, leaning forward to get her driver’s attention.

The day was sunny and mild. It was late enough in the afternoon that schoolchildren played on the banks of the pond, and a few rowboats dotted the surface of the water. Martha leaned against the bridge railing and watched the nearest boat, a far-off expression in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter a fig to them, does it?” she said. “Everything we fight so hard for—votes and Prohibition and all that—that family out for a row on the pond doesn’t care one bit, do they?”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Lily said, but Mrs. Ohman’s voice, piercing as a piccolo, cut across hers.

“You may be right, Martha. They may know nothing about the battles we fight. But if that young father is sipping from a gin-flask and gets drunk and capsizes the boat, and all those pretty children are drowned, everyone will gather round the little caskets weeping. Then we’ll see what a difference it might have made, had we succeeded in passing a prohibition law.”

Lily had often admired Mrs. Ohman’s ability to string together speeches that sounded as if she were standing on the platform in a lecture hall, just in ordinary conversation. But Mrs. Withycombe was less impressed.

“I didn’t write that letter, but I do believe we’d have a prohibition law sooner if we hadn’t distracted the Assembly and the press with the spectre of women voters. We ought to have kept our focus clearly on Prohibition from the beginning, and that family might be closer to being saved from a watery grave.”

In fact the young man pulling at the oars did not look in the least intoxicated, though Lily did see, as Mrs. Ohman apparently had, that he took a quick drink from a flask at his side. There was, in fact, something half-familiar in the set of the strong shoulders that propelled the boat along. When he took off his straw hat to wipe perspiration from his brow and she saw the shock of sandy hair, Lily realized with a start that the man was David Reid. Was he married and the father of a family?

She turned resolutely away from the pond, the man, the boat full of laughing children, and towards Mrs. Ohman and the other ladies. “What next, then? What do we do next?”

Mrs. Ohman sighed. For the first time she looked defeated. “I hardly know what to say, dear Lily. I am going to dedicate some time to thought and prayer before our next WCTU meeting.”

It all seemed hopeless—after all their meetings and speeches, the petitions, the letters, the march and the handbills and signposts. It all came down to this: a group of women could do nothing if the men in power would not allow them to do it. And just a few yards away on the sparkling water of Quidi Vidi was David Reid, with three children and a flask of gin, and Lily’s heart felt jagged in her chest, like broken glass.

He was rowing the boat to shore now, making the children laugh. The oldest boy, no more than nine, had his hands on the oars too, helping to bring the boat in, and on the shore a woman stood waiting for them.
His wife?
Lily looked at the woman’s face, her red hair, the easy way Mr. Reid spoke to her as he lifted the children from the boat. The little girl shouted “Uncle David!” as he handed her to her mother—Mr. Reid’s sister, surely. In spite of the quick, silver glint of the flask Lily’s chest felt lighter. The heat of the day seemed joyful rather than oppressive.

The other women talked on and Lily gazed at David Reid, at his broad shoulders and the long line of his lean body as he pulled the
boat into shore and tied it up. He wore no tie, waistcoat or jacket, only a blue shirt with the collar open and sleeves rolled up past the elbows. His trousers were rolled up too, above the ankles, and he was barefoot, splashing into and out of the water, then sitting on the grass to put on shoes and socks. The children clambered over him as he sat down: two little towheaded boys and, between them in size so presumably in age, a girl whose red hair was twisted into braids but escaped in small damp curls around her face. She had the same colouring as her mother and uncle: just at that moment Mr. Reid took off his hat again and laid it on the grass, and the gleam of sunlight made his hair shine like the polished bottom of a copper pot.

Then he looked up and saw Lily. He looked twice, as if making sure of who it was, waved, and came over, the little girl still clinging to his arm. He picked up his hat as he rose and put it back on his head just in time to lift it off again as he approached and said, “Miss Hunt. Mrs. Ohman. Ladies.”

“Mr. Reid, good day,” said Mrs. Ohman, a little stiffly. “You must have a holiday.”

“Half-holiday. Promised my sister I’d take her and the little ones down to the pond as soon as we got a sunny day.” He turned the full force of his charm on Mrs. Ohman as if he would burn through her chilly greeting like sunshine through morning fog. “I was in the House last night. I’m sorry. You must be greatly disappointed—I know I am. I’d dared to imagine it was the dawn of modern times in St. John’s.”

“I fear we will have to wait a long time for that, Mr. Reid,” said Mrs. Ohman. “And at any rate you know that we wanted the vote so we could bring in Prohibition, so I hardly think you would be entirely pleased with the outcome.”

“Ah well, I like to take the good along with the bad, as it were,” he said. “Miss Hunt, will you come down and meet my sister and
the little ones? This here is Annie. She won’t leave go of me, but I know Catherine would like to meet you.”

“Of course,” Lily said. She excused herself from Mrs. Ohman and the other ladies, and found herself being introduced to Catherine Malone, Mr. Reid’s widowed sister, and the two little boys, who were clamouring for a sweet now that the boat ride was over. Mr. Reid made a great show of searching his pockets and finding nothing, then pulling molasses kisses out of his ears and nose, which had the children falling on the ground in laughter.

“They can’t get enough of him,” Mrs. Malone said. “We don’t see much of him, he’s so busy with the paper, but he’s as good as a circus when he comes by to entertain the children.”

“Miss Hunt! We’re leaving!” called Mrs. Peters from the bridge.

“Oh, stay with us awhile,” Mr. Reid pleaded. “You can walk home with us, and who knows, perhaps we’ll even get you out in the rowboat?”

“I’m not dressed for boating,” Lily protested, but she ran over to the bridge anyway, to tell Mrs. Ohman that Mr. Reid would see her home.

Mrs. Ohman pressed her lips into a thin line. “Lily, have your parents met Mr. Reid? I hardly think they would approve of him coming to call on you. Mr. Reid is a member of the Kirk only so far as having his name on the books: he is neither a regular churchgoer nor a temperance man.”

“It’s a family outing, with his sister and her children. They’ll see me safely home. It’s not as if I’ll be alone with Mr. Reid.”

“Still, I know your father would not be pleased.”

Lily’s admiration for Mrs. Ohman was so great that it was difficult to stand her ground, but last night’s escapade emboldened her. Perhaps the anti-suffragists were right: once a woman took it into her head to think for herself, who knew where the defiance might stop?

Mrs. Ohman shrugged. “Your parents trusted me to take you out for a ride and back. I suppose I will have to trust you, now, to get back by tea-time.”

“I will, Mrs. Ohman.”

The other ladies went back to the carriage as Lily returned to the lakeshore where the children were playing leapfrog with Mr. Reid. Lily sat on a bench with Mrs. Malone, who was easy to talk to and seemed surprisingly cheerful for the widowed mother of three small children. Her husband had gone down on a ship called the
Mary Rose
two years earlier; she was a seamstress who worked long hours into the night to earn enough to pay her rent and feed the children.

“David helps us a bit, when he can,” she said, “though he makes little enough money himself. He loves writing for the newspapers even though it doesn’t pay so well. He likes to believe newspapers can change the world.”

It was, Lily knew, a bit dishonest to have told Mrs. Ohman that she would be with Mr. Reid, his sister, and the children. They all walked from the lakeshore to Water Street and took the streetcar to the west end, then got off and walked to Mrs. Malone’s home on Cuddihy’s Lane. It would have been far shorter and simpler to drop Lily off first at Queen’s Road, which they had passed on the way to the streetcar stop, but she did not suggest that and neither did Mr. Reid. His sister asked if they would stay and have tea but Mr Reid said no, he would walk Lily home. Saying goodbye to the tangle of children and kissing his sister on the cheek, David Reid tucked Lily’s hand firmly in the crook of his arm and set off on the walk back east along New Gower Street.