Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with an open smile and black Scotch eyes that were curious and bold. “A bit too bold if you ask me,” said Bridie. To Bridie, Cam was unfailingly polite and deferential, and he certainly was a good worker. In ninety-degree heat he stripped to his waist, confronted the four-foot girth of a pine, and slung his executioner’s axe. Sweat raced in rivulets down the small of his back, staining his trousers to the thighs. Positioning herself perfectly between the vegetable rows, Lily was able to keep a close watch on his performance.

      The feelings she was experiencing were new, and puzzling. She knew what animals suffered to procreate and what men and women, for inscrutable reasons, accomplished in their midnight chambers. That such acts might be accompanied by the most exquisite configuration of emotion, titillation and ecstasy had not occurred to her outside the vague intimations of her dreams. Until now. Her legs, made sturdy with farm work, went to jelly in his presence; her heart, thoroughly sound, pounded as if in distress. Always he was polite, solicitous: “Can I help you with that, Lily? Looks too heavy for you, that pail.” But his gaze clung to her, and she wondered frantically if he too could see her breasts, if even the extra band of muslin she tied around herself were not enough to bridle them.

      “That young man’s got to go,” Bridie said near month’s end. “He never stops leerin’ at Lily.”

      “But the girl’s fifteen,” said Chester. “She’s bound to attract the boys.”

      “I’ll stay out of his way, Auntie.”

      “He’s a real good worker, woman. You know how bad my back’s been lately.”

      “I know how bad your medicine’s been,” she shot back. Then full of weariness she said, “All right. He stays. But just till the next section’s done. Then out he goes, bag and baggage.”

      As if he had overheard the threat, Cam took his glistening biceps and shoulders to the farthest corner of the timber stand, out of sight and harm’s way. He ate his lunch in the woods. At supper he wore a clean shirt and got Bridie talking about her business, the growth in town, even radical politics. Bridie was amazed to learn that one so young could understand the imperatives of George Brown’s ‘true grit’ policies. Lily, naturally, had expected such genius from the outset. Chester swung between envy and relief. September came. The muggy weather remained. So did Cam. Bridie left for the camp “one last time, I swear by all the snakes in Scotland!”

      Lily felt undone by Cam’s sudden distance. With Bridie away, he returned to the bush after supper, swinging his axe against the yielding pine until twilight. I’ll go to him, Lily decided. And why not? Something inevitable and foregone has already happened; it’s only the working out that’s left.

      Leaving Chester slumped in a doze, Lily slipped out into the gloaming. It was a perfect night. Even Bill had gone off to town in his buggy. She and Cam would be alone under a consenting moon. With no particular stratagem in mind, Lily hastened towards the barn. A sound, like the cry of a creature struck by talons, came from Lily’s left. She stopped. Now it was a soft mewling. Old Bill’s tabby birthing kittens again? Lily sidled through the beanstalks and came up behind the Indian corn that bordered on Bill’s property. His log barn was illuminated in the moonlight as war the source of the sounds.

      Violet was half-sitting with her back against the wall, her loose dress open to expose her breasts, which Cam was kneading with both hands as if he were stretching dough. Violet’s own hands were busy in Cam’s lap, coaxing his flabby member as they would the Guernsey’s teat. Violet uttered a wail of pain, release or frustration – Lily could not discern which.

      “Shut up, ya fuckin’ bitch! Shut the hell up!” He slapped her so hard her head snapped back and hit the logs behind her. Then he was shoving his instrument into his trousers and stomping away into the dark. Violet’s sobs pursued him, inarticulate and discordant. But, at the first nicker of Bill’s pony in the lane, she stopped, pulled her dress together, and scuttled towards the unlit cabin.

      Lily stood in the corn, bereft, empty, then furious. Above her the jib of the quartering moon luffed, and went out.

      “Three of ’em, city-biddies,” Bill warned Bridie at the doorstep “All dolled up for christenin’ by the look of it.” And he winked mysteriously towards Lily. “They’ve already made the turn, I reckon.”

      Aunt Bridie never panicked, especially on Saturday afternoons in September with the weather clement and the week’s market done. “If God hadn’t been Presbyterian,” she would say, “he’d’ve made his Sabbath on Saturday afternoons so’s all of us could rest together.” Nonetheless, she went indoors at a trot, signaling for Lily to follow.

      “It’s the Ladies Aid for sure,” she mumbled. Wordlessly they hurried about “straightening up” the living area. Bridie covered the table, set it for tea and put the kettle on. She turned to Lily. “This is about you, you can be sure.”

      No doubt they were coming to drag her away to Miss Pringle’s school. “Go an’ see that uncle of yours is safe in his stall,” Bridie said, removing her apron but otherwise making no further concessions to the visitors. Lily raced to the barn. Chester was in his workshop, now fully restored to him since Cam’s sudden departure. He hadn’t bothered to remove the pallet, finding it a more convenient spot to rest between stints at the workbench. That is where Lily found him.

      Meanwhile, the delegation had arrived: the missuses McHarg, Salter and McWhinney. After tea and niceties, Mrs. McWhinney took the lead. “I’ll come right to the point,” she said with mercantilist efficiency, draining her cup.

      “The point,” interrupted Reverend McHarg’s representative, “is Lily.”

      Bridie poured Mrs. McWhinney another cup of tea.

      “The point is the baptism of this innocent child.”

      “We know how good you been to her an’ all,” added Josephine Salter hastily. “Nobody can take that away from you. You been a wonderful momma to this dear little foundlin’ here. Just the other night I says to Mr. Salter –”

      “What Josie means, is that it may be all right for you to reject your Maker, to live out here in a state of sin and run the risk of eternal damnation –”

      “You’re a bright woman, Bridie,” said Mrs McWhinney. “Nobody denies you that. You work hard an’ you keep your own counsel. Well an’ good. But we’re talkin’ here about the girl. Now we all might come from different churches, an’ we have our set-to’s from time to time, but we all agree on this – the girl deserves a chance to save her own soul.”

      “It don’t even matter who baptizes her,” added Mrs. Salter with Methodist charity. “It’s just gotta be done, that’s all.”

      No one had looked directly at Lily during this exchange though she was occasionally acknowledged with a flutter of fingers or a glancing nod. Bridie sat straight-backed, following each of the speakers with intense interest.

      “Do you intend to toss a coin?” she asked.

      “Bridie, this is serious. We’re just askin’ you to think about the girl, about her future.”

      “In Heaven or Port Sarnia?”

      The sudden edge to Aunt Bridie’s voice silenced Mrs. Salter and Mrs. McWhinney. They hadn’t expected it to come to this. Mrs. McHarg, being Orange, had more ancient claim on self-righteousness.

      “Both,” she said.

      Bridie СКАЧАТЬ