Scattered Bones (15 page)

Thank goodness for her father. If there’s any semblance of civilization in this place it’s his doing. It’s he, or more likely his secretary, who sends her
The Ladies Home Journal
by post every month. The recipe for coconut and chocolate cake, which has been baked especially for this evening’s soirée, was found in its pages.

Since the professor never listens to anything but Bach and Beethoven, Lucretia thinks it a wonder that he always picks out the latest hits. She’s pleaded with him to use the strongest wrapping possible. He does, but nevertheless half of the records arrive in pieces. But, God bless him, that doesn’t stop him, and she has a nice collection from those that remained intact. Tonight will be all jazz and foxtrot.

But it’s not Broadway hit tunes that have saved her life in this forsaken place. It’s the books that he sends religiously four times a year. Sherwood Anderson, E. M. Forster, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald – the moment they arrive she tears into them like a ravenous dog. If truth be told, she prefers Colette and Agatha Christie to Aldous Huxley and James Joyce, but she doesn’t tell her father that. He’s been trying to improve her mind since the day she was born, and she doesn’t want him to think his efforts have been entirely fruitless.

Parcels are sent to Ernst too, mostly radical philosophers – Nietzsche, Marx, and Bakunin – but the covers remain unopened, the pages unturned.

Lucretia realizes that her father has not always been kind to her husband, but still she thinks Ernst should appreciate him more. Although servants drive Professor Hollingshead to distraction with “their ceaseless fussing,” he did hire a housekeeper/nanny to look after Izzy so she could live with him and attend a proper school.

It’s this arrangement that provided Lucretia with the excuse to travel to her beloved hometown for two months most summers. In June she would make the perilous journey from Pelican Narrows to Toronto to bring the child home for the summer. The first leg was travelled by barge or canoe to Prince Arthur, the next by train for thousands of tedious miles. In the fall the trip was reversed

Izzy was an angel on these long expeditions, Lucretia has to admit that. The little girl spent most of her time drawing – the train, the passengers, the landscape outside, anything that caught her eye. Lucretia would while away the hours making long lists of what she and Izzy would do in Toronto – The Royal Ontario Museum, the Art Gallery, the Canadian National Exhibition. Perhaps they might go and see the imposing King Edward Viaduct that had recently been built across the Don Valley. Why, just to ride a streetcar would be a treat. There would be visits to beauty salons, and manicurists, and the shops. Oh, the shopping! Those hours spent in the Eaton’s Ladieswear Department – that was something she dreamed about the entire year.

During her stay, her friends lined up to give dinner parties in her honour. As a dweller in Canada’s savage northland, she was regarded as the most exotic, and therefore most desirable, of guests. Of course, she exaggerated her adventures in the wilds. “The redskins, their faces hideous in red war paint, surrounded the rectory. A massacre for sure, but I yelled at them, ‘You will roast in Hell for eternity!’ and they ran away.”

Paradoxically, the only time Lucretia truly feels like a missionary’s wife is when she is visiting her hometown. Women’s auxiliaries , the Girl Guides, the YWCA, church study groups – there were so many invitations to speak she could hardly accept them all. Naturally, she romanticized the mission work – “Our dear children, their faces glowing, knelt and recited the Lord’s Prayer with such fervour that it brought tears to our eyes.” But then she could hardly be expected to reveal how dull her daily routine really is.

For some unfathomable reason, Izzy has decided to spend yet another twelve months in Pelican Narrows, so Lucretia will be deprived of her visit to civilization for the second year in a row. She just might go crazy.

She winds up the gramophone, carefully places the needle, and begins to sway her hips – she’s on the Palais Royale dance floor in the arms of a handsome man, preferably a sexy film star. In a Bessie Smith voice she croons:

Bad luck has come to stay

Trouble never end

My man has gone away

With a girl I thought was my friend

I’m worried down with care

Lordy, can’t you hear my prayer

As she’s sashaying past the front window she spots Florence Smith striding towards the rectory. The fat pugs, Artemis and Athena, waddle behind her. “Oh God, the battle axe is upon us,” Lucretia groans.

When the Smiths first arrived to take over the Hudson’s Bay Company post, Lucretia had high hopes that she and the fur trader’s wife would become the best of friends. They would take tea together, gossip about the goings-on in Pelican Narrows, complain about their husbands. But it hadn’t turned out that way. The gulf between them is as wide as the Grand Canyon.

The trouble is their personalities are as different as black and white, as dog and cat. For example, Florence is passionate about exercising in the great outdoors. Lucretia shudders just thinking about how that spring, just after the ice was out, she had spotted the big woman high on a rock about to dive into the frigid waters of Pelican Lake. She was wearing her wool jersey tank suit which obscenely hugged her large body. Why, just this morning she heard the children laughing at her, calling Flo a hippopotamus. That’s exactly how Lucretia has described her to Ernst. Although he had laughed out loud, he admonished his wife, “But she is so kind and does such good work for the church. You mustn’t make fun of her. ”

Most disappointing, the woman has no sense of style. Today she’s dressed in her usual plaid shirt, canvas shoes and corduroy trousers straining over her large rump. She wears not a touch of powder and her grey hair is braided and then wound on top of her head like a coiled snake. Ugly as sin, Lucretia thinks. She, Lucretia, may live in the godforsaken north, but a lady she will always be and a stylish one at that.

In Toronto she always has her hair nicely bobbed, shingled and Marceled. Ernst has complained that it’s too short, but she ignores him. Annie, amazingly, is good at cutting hair, and manages to preserve the style until Lucretia can get to a proper beauty parlour.

Even in the hottest weather, she will not do without her stockings, rayon if not silk, and her fashionable leather pumps. She’s as slender as she was when she was twenty and her small breasts and narrow hips are fashionably boyish. The Flapper styles look divine on her, even if she does say so herself. This morning, she’s wearing a bright yellow sun frock with a pretty white cowl collar and Mary Jane shoes.

Florence pokes her head through the door. “Ready to go?”

“Sit and have a cup of tea. We have time,” Lucretia insists.

“Maybe some lemonade. It’s so hot out there, I’m sweating like a pig. ”

Yes, you are, thinks Lucretia. She calls Annie to bring the drinks and a bowl of water for the dogs who happily lap away.

“So what do you think of our visiting author?” Florence demands in her loud, vigorous voice.

“Very nice, very interesting, very witty,” Lucretia merrily replies.

“I think he’s a horse’s ass. I tell you, something wicked is going on in this place and everybody’s attention is diverted by this clown performing stupid tricks.”

“What do you mean wicked?”

“To be truthful, I don’t exactly know. But I’ve heard the dogs howling like mad coyotes every night for the last few days. I’ve seen the Cree elders huddle together, shouting and arguing as if they’re in a council of war. When I’m out walking at night, I feel the spirits getting ready to leave this place. We’ll be destitute, all of us.”

“Maybe we should say a prayer.” Lucretia meekly begins, “Lord bless Thy own and bring the heathens to the light of
Thy truth...”

Florence butts in, “What a fat lot of good that will do.” She bangs out the door, Artemis and Athena scurrying behind her.

By the time Lucretia reaches the fenced compound next to the HBC store, Florence is already busy setting up the tables. She seems to have recovered from her gloomy prophesising and is whistling while she works. Never mind it’s hot as hell.

“Just thinking about that knitting machine you brought from Toronto,” she calls out to Lucretia. “Damned thing never did work.”

Florence always brings this up. For some reason, she thinks Lucretia’s attempt to organize a knitting cooperative in Pelican Narrows the biggest folly ever committed by a member of the human race.

“Don’t worry, Florence. I’ve learned my lesson. It’s useless trying to do anything progressive here,” she spits out.

She never gets the credit she deserves. These bales of clothing, for example. It’s she who, on her trips to Toronto, makes the cajoling speeches to the women’s auxiliaries, the IODE, the Junior League, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, any group that will listen. It isn’t easy to persuade them to organize the drives, collect the donations and ship them to Pelican Narrows. But has she ever heard a word of thanks? No, never.

She had sorted through the donations the previous evening and discovered that this lot is a rich one. A black cloche hat with an art deco design in white was particularly striking as was a cape made of black Manchurian dog fur. There was even a silver compact, seemingly never used, with the initials EMS artfully engraved on the back.

“Whatever could that woman have been thinking of? ” Lucretia thought. “Giving away such a precious thing.”

She would have liked to have kept the better items for herself, but she knew that, with the housekeepers watching her every move, talk of her greediness would soon spread like an oil slick through Pelican Narrows.

While Florence piles the clothing on the tables, Lucretia tells her she’s come up with a new plan. Each person can choose two articles from the children’s pile, and these will be free. But there will be a small charge for items selected from the women’s and men’s stacks, and this money will be donated to the church to carry out good works. “If they have to pay a little they might appreciate what they’re getting for once.”

“Not a bad idea,” Florence replies. “Don’t think it’ll work though.”

Already most of the female population of Pelican Narrows has gathered outside the enclosure. Lucretia calls out, “Everyone, form a line. St. Bartholomew people in front, St. Gertrude’s well behind. ”

Florence will act as gatekeeper allowing only a few customers in at a time.

At the beginning all goes as planned. The first two women, both Anglicans, carefully poke through the piles, pick out what they want for their children, and then hand over a few coins for a dress and a pair of men’s trousers. But just as the third customer walks through the gate, chaos descends. Everyone starts pushing, the Catholics crowding to the front, the Anglicans fighting to maintain their advantage.

Lucretia and Florence flap their arms and yell for order, but they have as much power to halt the bedlam as they would a charge of the Light Brigade. Stockings and jewellery, shirts and hats, corsets and nightgowns fly into the air. Shrieks of laughter spark out like fireworks.

Emile Ballendine pulls a rubber girdle onto her head and struts about imitating a chicken.

Mary Rabbitskin tugs a jersey bathing suit over her calico dress and pretends she’s swimming across Pelican Lake.

Young Edith Bear has found a string of fake pearls, wraps them around her neck, and pulls them upwards as if to strangle herself.

Harriet Bird has dug up a pair o
f
T-bar shoes with two inch heels and a rhinestone buckle. She stuffs her big feet into them and then hobbles about like a drunken bear.

They’re all jabbering in Cree, so Lucretia doesn’t catch a word, but Florence knows what’s going on.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves!” she loudly berates them. “Mrs. Wentworth went to a lot of trouble to get these things. And you pay her back by putting on this performance?”

Most of the women look shamefaced, but not Grace Merasty. She has discarded her own clothes and now wears an evening frock made of silk georgette, with a low V neck displaying her ample bosom. The dress is a royal blue colour with a red rose pinned at the hip. She’s donned elbow-length gloves, high heels, and a huge pink hat with a drooping brim. Just as Lucretia opens her mouth to compliment her on how nice she looks, Grace begins to mince about, crooning in a husky voice:

Bad luck has come to stay

Trouble never end

My man has gone away...

Lucretia fights back tears. The woman is mocking her and everyone is laughing. She glances at Annie who
does
look guilty. Lucretia knows this isn’t the first time she’s been made a laughing stock by her housekeeper’s gossip. How much mileage Annie will get out of that little dance scene she obviously witnessed an hour before, Lucretia can only imagine.

Oh, how she loathes this place. It’s nothing like what it was supposed to be. Before she left for the mission, she had attended a three-day retreat at St. Michael’s where wives of retired missionaries gave lectures.

“First thing,” one particularly worn-looking woman advised, “set up a Woman’s Auxiliary. You’ll find the wives are often more responsive to the Christian message than their mates. We can’t call them husbands, because most won’t have said their vows. Sometimes one man lives with two or three women.” At this, the participants had all tittered. “Often these are sisters-in-law or widows who are not able to feed themselves. Nevertheless, as missionary wives your job is to persuade them to get rid of all but one of these spouses. Then, you must insist that their union be sanctified by the church.”