More in Anger (8 page)

And then there was that whole mess May got herself into. May had finished university and was back living at home and working at the public library downtown, and Opal had thought they were in for some calm waters. But that summer Fred, a Scot from Dundee, had been hired as the church organist and choir leader. He was immediately a great hit with everyone, the Macaulays included. He was affable, and gifted as a musician and teacher.
The Macaulays had him over for dinner often, and Mac, Opal and May had all enjoyed his company. But when it became apparent that he was turning his attentions specifically towards May, that was a different kettle of fish. How dare he, a man twenty years her senior? He had no business courting a young girl like that. Opal felt he had betrayed their hospitality, and their trust. She took him aside politely to suggest that it was not appropriate, that he was taking advantage of a young girl's naïveté. But nothing Opal said dissuaded him. In fact, her objections seemed to make him more, not less, resolved, and May, completely lacking experience when it came to matters of the heart, was easy prey. She was moonstruck. And giddy. And silly as Opal had never before seen her. She was more like Lillie than like herself. Never mind that she was almost thirty; she was completely innocent and susceptible to his machinations.

The situation only got worse when it was revealed that Fred was in fact a married man! He already
had
a wife! How dare he set his sights on May?! Opal was faint with outrage. Fred would not be invited to their home again, but she had felt only temporary victory because now the whole wretched affair was continuing in secret. Whenever May left the house, Opal suspected she was going to meet him, but what could she say? And she couldn't forbid May from singing in the church choir. The whole business was deeply humiliating for Opal, and she could not hold her head up. She almost stopped going to church.

The day came that Fred hand-delivered a note in which he insisted upon seeing them the following day, either in their home or at a restaurant. She was not about to discuss anything with that man in a public place, so what could she do? She told Mac
she doubted she could stay in the same room with him, but Mac said they had better get it over with and hear the man out. All right, said Opal. But she would not offer him tea.

Fred said right out that his intention was to marry May. He said that he had asked her and that she had accepted.

“Well, this is the first we've heard of it,” snapped Opal.

Fred said nothing.

“And what does your wife have to say about it?” asked Opal.

“Agnes is my wife in name only,” said Fred.

“But a wife nonetheless.” Well, what had happened to his marriage? Opal wanted to know. And where exactly was his current wife?

He had parted ways with Agnes York years before, he said, well before he had come to Canada, because Agnes had told him flat out that she had—and he quoted—“no inclination whatsoever towards the pioneering life,” and wanted to stay where she was, in Dundee. (Pioneering life indeed, thought Opal. You would think they were a bunch of savages.) She was terrified, Fred said, with an attempt at levity, of the Indians. So he had set sail alone. He said that he and she were too young when he married. They did not know their own minds. Which was no longer the case with him. He knew exactly what he wanted, and when, and whom, and that whom was their daughter May.

He might as well tell them now, he added, that he had been offered and had accepted a teaching job at a college near Seattle, a tenured position, and that he and May would be moving there in September, soon after they were married. They would marry this coming summer.

Now Opal had heard enough, more than enough to confirm her worst suspicions. She stood purposefully, expecting Mac to usher Fred to the front door. She had her parting words prepared: he was never to darken their doorstep again. He was never to telephone this house again. Never mind what May wanted. But Mac let Opal down. “Come upstairs,” he motioned to Fred. And the two of them went up to Mac's study, where, she was sure, Mac got out the bottle of Scotch he had hidden there and thought she knew nothing about. Ha. Dollars to doughnuts she would be able to smell the liquor on them when they came back. Before long she heard them up there, sharing a laugh like brothers while she, down here, and alone, was on her third hanky. May was nowhere in sight. When Opal heard the men descending the stairs, she fled to the summer house. There, she wept some more.

This marriage couldn't possibly be what God had in mind for May. Her future had been unfolding nicely. What purpose could it possibly serve to quit a good job and leave now? And leave not only Calgary but her whole country? What use would her education be down there?

“What about children?” she asked May, when she finally caught up with her and they shared a cup of tea. “Twenty years' difference in age, dear.”

“We don't want children,” said May, “and if we did, so what? It wouldn't be the first time in history someone had an old father, would it?” There was fight in May's voice. Just look what that man had done to her. Where had Opal's pleasant, agreeable daughter gone?

For the first time in her life, May had spoken back to her mother. Was not always willing to help. Was not always softhearted and kind. It wasn't the university or the job that had done this to her—it was that man. What, oh, what was Opal to do? May could without doubt see what she was doing to her mother, the pain she was causing her, and yet she had hardened her heart against the very person who loved her best in this world, and she would not budge in her conviction that she would marry this man, and marry him soon.

It was more than a month before Opal could bring herself to tell her family in Winnipeg about the whole mess, and that was only when May announced that she wanted the wedding to take place there, and she would not listen to alternatives that would have enabled Opal to conceal the details. No one in Winnipeg took Opal's side either; no one would fight alongside her for what was right. Only her mother objected, and only mildly. “In the end, there's not much you can do about it, is there?” Georgie said. Opal's sister Lillie went on about how love was where you found it, and what fun they were going to have planning the wedding. Even Pearl found the time to write and offer her two cents' worth, which was to say that at her age May should surely be allowed to make up her own mind.

Well, if no one else cared, said Opal to herself, she would soldier on alone. She would fight tooth and nail. But then one day when she had gone into May's room—to check on the maid's progress—she found a letter hidden between the mattress and the box springs. She sat down on May's bed and read it, and realized she would not win this fight.

Monday, March 5, 1951

My darling bud of May,

There has never been any doubt in my mind, sweetheart, regarding you and me. That was just as sure as the day follows the night. We both knew it long before we admitted it to each other, didn't we, lass? And I don't feel that there is anything wrong at all about it. Had I been living with my wife, yes! But the end of my marriage to Agnes happened long before I met and fell in love with you. Dearest, it is so easy for people who have never had this sort of love to try and live our lives for us. But they can't. And they can't know what we are feeling.

I don't think your parents have been very fair to either of us, dearest. They both know me well, and I see no reason for them taking their present attitude. Your Ma has certainly done her level best to ruin my reputation, I must say, and I certainly resent it. However, I have an idea that she will be the one to suffer in the end. Insofar as we are concerned, darling, there isn't anything I want from them anyway, except their regard … and their bonnie daughter. And I'll have both, one of these days. Though the first will be much harder to get from “Ma” than from “Pa.”

Ah, my Mayflower. Now give me that beautiful mouth again, darling. You are so very lovely.

Yours always,

Fred

Fred Haig finally obtained his divorce in the United States, though Opal had serious doubts as to its authenticity and
legitimacy. But in the end, there was nothing for them to do but go. She left a letter saying as much on May's bed.

May 28, 1952

Dear May
,

Your father and I will be at your wedding. But you must not think, dear, that we have given our consent or agreed to go because we are any more reconciled to the situation, or that we feel happy at all about it. Rather, it is because of our great love for you. If you want us to be there, we want to go, and if you have your heart set on Winnipeg, then so be it.

I hope you will understand my feelings, and realize that I mention the causes of my concern only because I love you so much. I hope now that, as you say, “we can close the subject entirely.”

Love and Kisses, Mother

Lillie helped May get ready for her wedding day. Lillie and Malcolm held a big dinner for May and Fred the night before the wedding, at their big posh house. No doubt they all had drinks celebrating the impending wedding, and laughed, and had a jolly old time saying, What would Opal think! It wasn't right. Where was the bride's mother in all this? In a hotel room with her cranky husband who wanted to be at the party instead of with her, that's where.

So Opal went to her daughter's wedding in the end, but she wore her second-best dress and would not shake hands with her new son-in-law in the minister's study.

Opal and Mac arrived in White Rock on a Wednesday afternoon in May after their visit with May and Fred down in Seattle. The train trip across the border had been pleasant enough, and uneventful. It was a nice surprise to see all of Pearl's family, excepting Tom, gathered at the station to meet them before taking them to the town of Beresford, where Tom and Pearl lived. They had gone to a restaurant for lunch, but both the food and the service were poor; Mac would describe it later as about as crummy a meal as he had ever experienced. Unfortunately, the situation would turn out to be the same at the Beresford Hotel, where Pearl had arranged for them to stay.

The visits they had every day with Pearl and her family were pretty nice, though Pearl was often dreadfully late picking them up at the hotel. The household was somewhat hectic and sometimes chaotic. The eldest, Ruby, was nowhere to be seen much of the time, squirrelled away with a book; the second, Laurel, was rather unruly and disobedient—she had painted the wall of her room with her watercolours while they were there—but Opal put that down to attention-seeking, and being a little jealous of the attention the two younger girls necessarily got from their mother. But they were much smaller children, three and four, and Amethyst had both allergies and asthma, and needed more attention. Actually, Pearl seemed to favour Amethyst above all the children, so it wasn't all fabrication on Laurel's part. Little Vivien, the youngest, seemed often to get lost in the shuffle, and had glommed right on to her grandmother as though she were a lifebuoy. Opal always found her hanging around nearby, asking
to climb up in her lap, putting her little hands on Opal's face, lifting the netting of her hat off her face, planting wet kisses wherever she could find space. Opal liked the child. Together they brushed their hair and got ready for bed, and more than once Vivien fell asleep curled up against her.

Pearl and Tom's house was looking much better than it had during last year's visit. It had a new roof, and Pearl had hired a neighbour man to put in some gardens, which looked quite nice—a triangular pansy bed near the front door, and a rose arbour through the middle of the front lawn left to right, with a cherry tree on either end. Opal and Mac escaped the house and went for a bit of a stroll after supper one evening when the rain let up—temporarily, of course—and they had discovered raspberry canes, and a thicket of blackberries that would soon be in bloom. The family seemed right at home. The rose arbour looked especially nice from the living room and bedrooms. Improvements were still under way. Tom spent one Sunday digging a large hole for what he said would be a lily pond. He mixed cement in a wheelbarrow, and worked away until past dark, and Pearl was cross with him for being late for dinner.

On the Saturday, the day of their departure, Pearl drove them into Vancouver, taking Ruby to her piano lesson and Laurel to a ballet lesson. The two youngsters had been dropped off at a babysitter's, and how they had cried and carried on, saying goodbye to Gramma and Grampop! They had hung off her legs, hopped up and down—what a scene! Opal herself had found it hard not to join them with her own tears.

After the girls' lessons, they had a light lunch on the sixth floor of the Hudson's Bay before Pearl drove them to the CPR
station, where she had let them out at the front doors and left them to fend for themselves with their luggage. Their train didn't depart for another four hours, so they had plenty of time. They could have had one more hour of visiting, but Pearl was clearly glad to be seeing the backs of them. “We've been visiting for a
week
,” she exclaimed, as though she'd survived an ordeal. Not only that, she added, but she really had to get back to get Tom's supper on.