Hetty Dorval (7 page)

Perhaps it was the death of Ernestine that hastened Father’s and Mother’s plans. I don’t know. But I found that Mother and I were really going to England in the late autumn. We began our serious preparations and I my excited goodbyes. Mother alternated between joy at going and a resolve not to leave Father. She would go. My spirits rose. She would not go. My spirits sank. Father said she was going, and no nonsense. Again she would go.

Three days before we left, Father drove down to the rancheree where Joe Charley lived, to get some Indians to help at the ranch before the good weather broke completely, and Mother and I went with him. We always drove with Father, that last week, wherever he went. Three sit crowded in the front seat, talking and laughing together. Because this is, perhaps, the last drive, each is in his own degree projected into the future, which at that moment joins the flying present and the past. No one says so, but each one is aware within – we shall be gone, he will be here – they will be gone, I shall be here. Those who make a real and long departure of years, see the familiar road, houses, trees, shops, people, the sage-brush and the hills, the cat, the dog – and a difference lies upon these objects. Each common thing bears the strange mark of something which we are imminently leaving behind, which
we shall not hereafter customarily see as before, but which is intrinsically real and will remain in its own place. And so it was then as we drove about Lytton and the surrounding country with Father.

After crossing the Bridge and the rivers that day we drove east, and as we neared the fork that led downhill to the rancheree beside the river, Mother said to Father, “Frank, I’ve never seen the place where The Menace used to live. Turn up to the right, it’s only a little way!” And Father turned to the right and stopped at the top of the slope as we saw the bungalow, and Mother and I got out and went round to each window. The wind blew fresh up there. The sage-brush spread for miles before your eyes, and sage had invaded the garden.

“She left here over a year ago, you know, Frankie. No one seemed to know why,” said Mother. “I don’t know where she is, menacing about, now, but someone from Lytton saw her in Vancouver not long ago. And quite affluent.” And I said that I had seen her too, just that once, looking at the pearls. Ernestine, and leaving school, and coming home, had quite put Hetty out of my mind.

Mother and I could not get into the bungalow anywhere, but we turned and stood on the broad porch, looking down on the rapids of the river bright and noisy below, and across at the great back-drop of dun-coloured hills desolate under a blue sky. Father honked the horn. “Come here, Frank,” called Mother. “Do come. Just for a minute. I want to show you.”

Father, doing his pretend grumbling, got out and came over to us. Two things about Father. He was a man of some substance and a good rancher, and he could wear a hat better than anyone I ever saw. It didn’t matter whether it was his old wide-brimmed ranch hat or his town hat. On went the hat – smack – with
Father’s genius for angle. He came over to the porch and stood with us there and looked north, east, and west.

“Good old Menace,” he said, “she certainly picked a view!” (Good old Menace! – but then Father hadn’t seen Hetty.) And we all stood looking.

When we reached the dilapidated long shack where Joe Charley lived, Mother and I waited outside while Father went to find someone to speak to. The rancheree looked forsaken. Most of the Indians had gone to town. One or two dogs came and barked at us, a few hens scratched in the dust, some children peeped shyly, and then a squaw followed by two young girls came out of a house like Joe Charley’s. Father gave them the message and we drove away.

When we got near Lytton, Mother said, “Frank, you’ll say I’m crazy. All right, I’m crazy. But I want to get the key for that bungalow and really go inside. You get it from the real estate office and Frankie and I will go to Wong’s and get him to make up a picnic lunch and we’ll go back and have a picnic there. Do let’s.”

So Mother and I went to the Chinese café and got a picnic lunch and a thermos from Wong, and Father went to Bellamy’s for the key. We drove up the hill again and got out. Father unlocked the door and we all went in.

Mrs. Broom had made a neat business of leaving the house, just as she had of going into it. There was none of the litter and exhaustion of an empty and deserted dwelling. Just a neat little, square little, scrubbed little bungalow, with a fireplace, and book-shelves made specially for Hetty Dorval, and two bedrooms, a bathroom of sorts, and a kitchen; and in front, a broad porch overlooking the river. I did not work up any sentiment about the room that could look and had looked so warm and confiding. It seemed better to me as it
was that sunny day with Mother and Father, more comfortable, although it is true that without the presence of Hetty and all that surrounded her the place felt emptier than empty. To begin with, I think that Mother had wanted to exorcise the bungalow completely, superimposing on my youthful memory which she and Father could not share, the picture of us three together there, dispelling the memory of her little daughter and the stranger. Then she fell in love with the bungalow, and Father played right into her hands.

“Bellamy tells me,” he said, shoving his hat back, “that the place could be bought for a song. They want to wind up the old Absalom estate and they’d almost give it away.”

Mother whirled round and her eyes sparkled. “Then give it to me, Frank! I want it! I adore it! Let’s have it!”

“Whatever for? Don’t you like the ranch? Your mother doesn’t like her old home, Frankie!”

“Darling, don’t be
so
silly! You know I love the ranch. But when you and I are old, old people and we don’t want to work any more, wouldn’t it be lovely to have this little bungalow on the hill-side!”

“Listen to your mother!” said Father smiling. “Thinks I’m made of money.”

“And then we could rent it and make some money in the meantime,” said Mother in jerks, pulling and pushing at a window.

The bungalow was a true log house, and the windows slid in grooves, to open. But the windows had grown into their places, so we pushed and pulled until we had them all open and the wind blew freely through.

“
There!”
said Mother, waving her hands to the wind as if to say “Come on,” and I knew exactly what she was doing. She was blowing Hetty Dorval right out of the house.

We sat down on the porch and ate Wong’s lunch and Mother said, “The thing about this place, Frank, is that you don’t have to buy the hills opposite. They’re all yours. No one’s ever going to use them – look, there’s the train!”

The melancholy hoot of the train creeping along beside the river below on its long journey across a continent was the only sign of the outside world, and comfortably remote. Here life would be very simple. Nothing and no one could complicate life here, Mother was saying. Couldn’t they? (“I will
not
complicate my life!”)

When we finished lunch we fell silent, and Father lay down on the flat boards and went to sleep. He could sleep anywhere. On a long rough run he could stretch his length on the running board of his car and sleep, and then drive on refreshed. He was famous for it.

We drove rather silently back to Lytton. We took the thermos back to Wong who stood outside his café in the bright sunshine. His grandchildren played near the door. Wong was an old fat Chinaman whose father was one of the Chinese who mined for gold in the Fraser and in the Cariboo country in the early sixties. Wong was born up country and he still spoke perversely among the risen generation the kind of English that his father spoke.

“What for you go away, Frankie?” he asked me. “You heap crazy. You smart girl, you stay home. Bimeby large trouble.
Sure,”
nodding sagaciously. “I read my China paper tell me. Large trouble Jap-ann. Large trouble Lush” (that was Russia). “Large trouble Yulip” (Yulip to rhyme with Tulip was Europe). “You stay home, I know! I tell you the truth, Frankie!” But I was nearly sixteen and I did not care about trouble in Yulip.

I realize now, as I write, that Wong was a rarely happy man. Philosophical, kind, cynical, amused, shrewd, comfortable, and as powerful as he cared to be. He served many, but was a servant to no one. He said good-bye to us, turned and went into his shop, still nodding, omniscient.

Late that afternoon I said the last of my farewells, to my old friend and teacher at the Convent-Hospital, Sister Marie-Cécile. She stood, a sturdy black and white figure, waving till we had driven out of sight.

The sun had dipped behind the hills and a wind had risen and was blowing cold against us down the channel of the Fraser as we drove home on the Lillooet road. There was so much to think of and so much to do that Mother forgot all about the bungalow; at least, she spoke no more of it to Father, as far as I knew. But next Christmas Day, at old Mr. Trethewey’s house in Cornwall, Mother received a cable which read, “Happy Christmas to both my girls stop hope you will like your bungalow Ellen all my love.”

So now Hetty Dorval’s bungalow belonged to my mother, and my mother had opened the windows and Hetty had been blown out and away. The bungalow had almost begun to mean to me not Hetty, but “That picnic we had on nearly the last day – you remember?” and Father lying there, asleep in the sunshine.

T
o be on the ocean, out of sight of land, on an actual sea voyage, and to be sixteen, was then very pleasant. One regards it now as through the wrong end of a telescope. It is illogically remote and disproportionate. On the first day of this voyage, when you are not yet initiated, you watch with respect the passengers being born into this new world which will shortly detach itself from the land world and move off into oceanic space. Passengers are born into this new world via the gang-plank and are delivered by accoucheurs, stewards and others, to whom this is no phenomenon. These passengers, male and female, wear their best hats and usually their best clothes. The reason for this is that their best clothes take more trouble to pack than their old clothes. Moreover, they are more impressive when the passengers board the liner. The next day, or soon afterwards, you identify some of these passengers, not by their clothes which are different and certainly not by their hats which are as different as possible, but by such slight landmarks as noses and chins, or sometimes by the recognition of a striking and memorable face. All this is
familiar to veteran travellers, but not to you. Some of these passengers then become torpid in deck chairs. But you are not torpid, because you are sixteen. You have joined a small mobile aristocracy whose members at first eyed each other speculatively and even with suspicion, but have since quickly become a closed corporation to which admission is the fact of being sixteen or seventeen but you must have some other commendable quality as well. There are usually hangers-on to this aristocracy who are persons of fifteen or less, but they hardly count. Also, you have become mildly in love with a young American girl (if you are a boy), or with a young American boy (if you are a girl), and you forget that the journey will ever come to an end. You are not sea-sick. Oh no. The lurch and plunge of the ship, the walloping slap of the ocean upon its side, and the buffeting winds are part of your delusion and your enjoyment. People who succumb to sea-sickness, usually adults, are negligible to you and worthy of being despised, for you have not yet learned compassion the hard way. The dining saloon is the seventh heaven, and you who have all your life helped with the dinner dishes at home, now gorge yourself in a superior and affluent manner (it costs no more) with the skilled aid of stewards and music. That the journey will end, you do not consider until suddenly it has ended. Life was still like that when Mother and I went away.

As Mother and I, still fellow-travellers, leaned on the ship’s rail watching the other passengers coming aboard and standing about in small talking groups amongst all the exciting weaving sounds of meeting, parting and departing, Mother touched my arm. “Frankie,” she said, “don’t look now, but there’s a woman with a most heavenly profile. Angelic! She’s standing talking to a little old man and one of the ship’s
officers. At least
she’s
not talking, they’re talking to her, and as pleased with themselves as two peacocks. Oh, don’t turn now, she’s looking our way.”

I turned as soon as I thought it safe, and I feel now that before I turned I felt a pricking in my thumbs. Perhaps not. Well, I turned, and by this time the woman had stopped looking in our direction and was again listening to the two men in a way infinitely gentle and pretty. It was Hetty. I gave a little gasp. “What, Frankie?” asked Mother.

“Mother,” I said very quietly, “you won’t believe me, but that’s Mrs. Dorval.”

Mother turned and faced me, all seriousness. “Frankie! You don’t mean that!” She paused. “So
that
is The Menace! Frankie, I can’t believe it. Not
that
girl! She can’t be Mrs. Dorval!”

“She is, Mother. That’s exactly who she is and that’s what she looks like. Do you see now why I couldn’t explain?” I said. “What am I going to do about it?”

“I don’t
think,”
said Mother slowly, “that Mrs. Dorval will come our way. She won’t be interested in two women travelling together, at least a woman and a girl, and it doesn’t matter whether she is or not. But we’ll keep our own counsel, Frankie. Well, I’m amazed! What a peculiar thing …” and Mother went on murmuring diminuendo.

I was rather shaken when we went down to our cabin. Fate was indeed throwing Hetty at us. But perhaps Hetty would not be thrown. We would see. She would do whatever suited her best.

We passed near each other once or twice during the day, but Hetty gave no sign. One would say that she did not see me. Of course, she might not at once know me, but a look at the passenger list, and the word “Lytton,” would recall my
name and home. I saw Mrs. Broom, walking alone. But Mrs. Broom was a woman whom one could easily not notice, in contrast to Hetty; and Mrs. Broom was herself an expert at not noticing anyone.