The Sister's Tale Read online

  “My name is Josephine Galloway,” the woman said, not looking at Flora. “The Overseer of the Poor is my friend. He asked me to bid for you.”

  Flora parted her lips to speak and did not know what to say. She hardly knew who she had been and did not know who she was to be now. She did not know whether she was going to the woman’s home as a servant, or was being sent back to Maria Rye, or was being taken to the Overseer of the Poor.

  “It is barbaric. He was afraid for you.” The woman glanced at Flora, nervous. Looked away. “I know your name is Flora. You don’t need to speak.”

  The horse leaned into the traces, pulling the sleigh up a steep street, passing large, new-looking houses.

  “That sickly woman in the wagon,” Josephine exclaimed, a burst. “They were going to put her up for auction! I cannot believe—”

  Flora put down the sandwich. She looked out her side of the sleigh, remembering women in the workhouse. Gaunt, motionless. Too sad to eat.

  An enormous house loomed from the winter trees, with a tower and gables.

  “The MacVey sisters live there,” the woman said. She began to lift the bearskin. “Their brother built them that house.”

  They turned onto a lane almost at the top of the hill, leading to a white house set back from the street by a wide lawn, with a barn and a veranda running around three sides of the house.

  “This is my home, Flora,” Josephine said. “You will live here now.”

  * * *

  —

  They stepped into a hallway, surfaces gleaming with cleanliness. The cold, bright day shut away with the closing of the front door.

  Flora set her boots on the rack. She followed the woman’s rustling skirt over slippery, varnished floorboards, then a soft rug. A babble of Irish accents rose as Josephine pushed open a door and ushered Flora into a kitchen.

  Three women, suddenly silent.

  Steamy warmth, a spill of flour on the yellow floor, green wainscot. Verses tacked to wallpaper, to the sides of cupboards.

  “Flora, this is Ellen, my cook. Ellen, this is Flora Salford.”

  Ellen was built like a goat, the framework of bones visible. Sagging cheeks, their lines compressed into riverine maps offset by sharp, percipient eyes. She wiped yeasty hands on her apron and took Flora’s hand. She did not shake it but made certain that Flora stood and returned her close look and allowed herself to be examined. Flora’s heart thickened.

  “Flora Salford, is it,” she said. “Well, then.”

  “This is Margaret,” Josephine continued.

  Margaret was tall and raw-boned, with large front teeth that protruded. She held a bowl in the crook of her arm and braved a glance into Flora’s eyes. She nodded and turned away, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  “And Mary.”

  Mary was small and quick. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Flora. Her voice was flat; friendship, Flora knew, was a thing to be earned.

  “You got a head of hair on you, girl. Some beautiful. Wants untangling. You can use cider vinegar rinse.”

  Mr. Dougan came into the kitchen. At Josephine’s bidding, he took away the green box. Flora heard his steps, clumping up uncarpeted stairs.

  Standing close to her new mistress, Flora glanced at her. She did not know if thanks should be given, or apology. Josephine returned her look, hesitating, as if she, too, did not know what to say. The lines beside her mouth deepened.

  “Mary, take her up, show her to her room.”

  * * *

  —

  Boiling hot water hissed from the spout of the claw-footed tub, with its palm-sized spigots, like metal daisy heads. Flora stared at the black grime outlining her toenails. Scraps of sock wool rose from between her toes and floated on the limpid water. She leaned forward and grasped her legs. Ribs; flat skin between her pelvic bones. The door opened just enough for a hand to drop fresh clothing onto the seat of a chair. She pushed herself up to look. Black dress with a white apron and a white cap. Black stockings. Leather shoes. Black, white, starched.

  Servant’s clothes.

  She slid under the water and opened her eyes.

  They’d made her wash on the night that she arrived at the farm, five years ago. She was ten years old and had disembarked from the ship in St. John and been driven to the Protestant Orphanage, but no family in St. John offered to take her and so the matron hung a placard around her neck reading Flora Salford and put her on a train. She arrived at the Pleasant Valley station on a cold spring night and Henry Quigley picked her up. Utter darkness, save for a flicker of light in one window, when the horse came to a stop before the farmhouse. Smell of cows and forest, and the thin throb of peepers. On the scarred linoleum, a washtub in front of a wood stove. Ada sent Henry and their two hired men out of the house and told Flora to take off every stitch of clothing and climb into the hot water. The tired farm woman gave her a fist-sized ball of hard soap.

  In the morning, Ada told her to make bread.

  I never made bread.

  Nor, she told Ada, when questioned, did she know how to make butter, or knit a sock or even use a hoe. At the workhouse, they had lined up and shuffled single-file to long tables, where they were fed like beasts at a trough. They were led up into high rooms—hot in summer, cold in winter—and given baskets of gloves to hem. They were told they were being punished for the sins of their parents, who were poor. They were lucky, they were instructed, to be fed and clothed, since the outside world was a place of danger and terror. Old women spent their whole lives in the workhouse. Men walked and murmured in their own yard, beyond a wall, making an unrelenting din with their hammers, splitting stones.

  Flora sat up suddenly, attempting to lose her memories in a rush of soapy water. She reached forward to adjust the magical spigots.

  Ada had not learned the whole of her shame. How workhouse children were made to stand in tubs while women rubbed them down with rough cloths, talking of boyfriends, insults and secret matters. How it made her feel as if her filth were intrinsic, something she had no power to remove.

  In this bathtub, where fresh water could be summoned at the turn of a tap, dirt separated from her, her legs were turning pink. She leaned forward, cupping her hands beneath the faucet.

  * * *

  —

  On Flora’s third day of work, Ellen told her to take tea to the front room, where Mrs. Galloway had a visitor.

  “ ’Tis her husband’s first cousin Carrie. Her that went around the world as a child and was almost killed by pirates.” Ellen held a silver pitcher between dainty fingers, set it next to a plate of sliced cake. “Set the tray on the table next to Mrs. Galloway’s chair.”

  Carrying the tray down the hall, Flora felt she had no underpinnings, might stumble and fall, since she did not know what kind of expression to put on her face, whether to smile or show fear; she knew only to be as invisible as Ellen, Mary and Margaret had instructed her, a costume hung on a line.

  She set down the tray so carefully that the porcelain barely shivered. She straightened, wanting to hurry back to the warmth of Ellen’s kitchen, where she could resume rolling dough thin enough to be pressed with a star-shaped cutter.

  Josephine’s guest was leaning forward, hands shaping a story.

  “…she had written and passed the matriculation exam. In fact, she placed second. It is a requirement for a student wanting to enter the University of New Brunswick. The law states that any person passing that exam, paying the dues, and agreeing to abide by the rules of the university will be accepted. Well, she—”

  “Excuse me, Carrie.” Josephine held up her hand, apologetic. “I would like you to meet Flora Salford. Flora, this is my cousin, Mrs. Emmerson.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Emmerson.”

  The woman looked up with acute, curious eyes.

  “I’m happy you’ve come to this house, Flora
.”

  Flora dropped a knee, awkward.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  Leaving, she wondered if Josephine would have introduced Mary or Margaret to Mrs. Emmerson, girls whose last names Flora did not know.

  * * *

  —

  Wrapped in shawls, Josephine and Carrie watched Flora leave the room. Sunlight shimmered in the frosted windows, stretched across the Persian carpet. New Brunswick was in the midst of a spell of intense cold.

  “She was not admitted,” Carrie said.

  Josephine was momentarily puzzled.

  “Oh, the student.” She laughed. “Yes. I’m sorry. Would you like milk in your tea?”

  Carrie accepted cup and saucer and sat back. “Mary Tibbits. She was not admitted into the university. Do you know why? Because even after interceding with a lawyer, even after going directly to President Harrison, she was denied entrance. They said, in effect, that a woman was not a person.”

  Carrie herself had been sent to a boarding school in Boston and then attended the Wellesley Female Seminary. She was married to a lawyer, lived in St. John, gave private lessons in French, German and Italian.

  “A woman has graduated from the University of Mount Allison College, you know,” Josephine said. Proud, because she herself had attended the female branch of Mount Allison Wesleyan Academy. “The first woman to receive a bachelor of arts degree in the British Empire.”

  “Yes. I’m sure Mary Tibbits called that to the attention of her member of the legislative assembly. He took up her cause, you know. He threatened to withdraw provincial funding unless she were admitted. The university reconsidered its position. She is there now. The non-person became a person.” Carrie drew a long breath and Josephine thought, inconsequentially, of a battered doll she had once glimpsed lying on the pillow of Carrie and her husband’s bed. They had no children.

  “It makes me angry.” Carrie stirred the milk into her tea. “Very angry.”

  Carrie’s visits always left Josephine feeling half-formed, tattered, and infused with a determination to join the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, as had Carrie, or visit the poor, as Carrie did, or start an organization of her own, as Carrie had done, several times—resolutions that faded as she discussed the week’s menus with Ellen, or sorted through calling cards in the silver dish, or wrote to Simeon telling him of lectures at White’s Hall, skating parties, the cornet band concert. Only this morning, she had been asked to join the town beautification committee, and had accepted, and did not tell Carrie.

  “The position of women is not that different from that of the paupers,” Carrie said, after a silence broken by the icy spit of snow against windowpanes. “Despite some progressive laws giving women like ourselves, married women, more rights to our own property, judges continue to adhere to narrow and patriarchal interpretations. By the way, did you see today’s paper?”

  “No.”

  “You know that American who writes for The Weekly Record? Mr. Train?”

  “Yes, I saw him at the auction.”

  “He has written a diatribe comparing the pauper auction to the infamous slave sales in the southern states before the war. He’s renowned in the United States, you know. Pleasant Valley will come to international attention.”

  “It was terrible, Carrie. There were three little children, a brother and two sisters, separated. My friend begged me to rescue Flora. Men were bidding for her.”

  Carrie set down her tea. She had not touched her cake.

  “There is so much wrong with the way things are now.”

  Her face hardened. Her voice acquired an elevated, strident tone.

  “Perhaps you don’t see it, Josephine, living here in this quiet little town. In the city, you can hardly hear yourself think, you can hardly breathe the air, there are so many manufacturers. There are women working in those mills. Children working ten hours a day. In dreadful conditions. And we women, who understand their needs better than any man, have no say in either drafting legislation or voting. Because, like your Flora, we are non-persons. We have been pauperized.”

  She is not my Flora, Josephine thought, resenting the implication, intimidated by the word legislation.

  Carrie sat forward on the edge of her chair. Josephine fancied that the years at sea had formed the freckles mapping her cheeks, and the remote, musing expression with a hint of remembered hardship that reminded her of sea captains—Simeon, Uncle Nathaniel.

  Carrie frowned, tapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair.

  “I am starting an organization to fight for women’s suffrage.”

  Suffrage. The word was appearing in the newspaper with increasing frequency, and Josephine sensed its peculiar complexity—suffering, muffins, rage—and could not help understanding why its adherents were mocked. The organization would be based in St. John, too far away for her to feel the obligation of joining. A relief.

  Carrie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  “I must go, Josephine. I told Mr. Dougan I would be ready by four.”

  In the hallway, Carrie fastened the clasp of her cloak, worked her fingers into wool-lined gloves.

  “I will be back to attend Mr. Train’s next lecture. Did you know he intends to dress a pauper in the finest Savile Row suit and put him on the stage? He intends to show how we judge by appearance and circumstance. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes. Well. Unless Simeon has returned.”

  Carrie’s face gentled. She patted Josephine’s shoulder.

  “My mother told me this was why she wanted to go to sea. She was tired of waiting. Always waiting.”

  * * *

  —

  “Go on to bed with you,” the cook said. Flora had dried the last pot and was hanging the cloth on the wood stove’s handle.

  Ellen sought her chair as if it were the day’s single consolation, a sigh carrying her down, feet rising to a footstool. She had snapped at Flora, today; harried her, hurried her. She had been exasperated over all the things the girl did not know how to do.

  “I have to sweep,” Flora said.

  “Only me to look at it.” Ellen flicked her hand at the floor.

  Flora stood with her feet set neatly side by side and looked at the floor.

  “I know about loneliness,” Ellen said. The cook was gazing at her as if seeing someone else. “You go on up to your bed.”

  As Flora climbed the stairs, the conversation she had overheard this afternoon ran in her mind, a quiet murmur spiked by occasional audible words—education, angry, conditions—and wondered at these tea-drinking, educated Canadians. What they have. Houses and husbands. In her room, the kerosene lamp guttered; she turned the knob and the flame leapt up behind the smudged glass. Snow sifted under the window, made a line along the sill. She put on wool socks, a flannel nightgown and a woollen cap. She blew out the flame and slid between the sheets.

  In the unfamiliar darkness, death was close. She could still hear Ada Quigley’s voice over the clicking of knitting needles and the crackling fire in the wood stove.

  I’m going to make a baby dress.

  Can I help sew it?

  If you get yer chores done.

  She wished she had seen the dimity that Ada had gone to town to buy. Ada didn’t usually go to town with Henry, especially not in winter, but she had not yet seen her daughter’s baby and wished to have a tiny dress ready for the child when she did.

  Did you get them caulked shoes on the mare?

  A sharp question to Henry. The last thing Flora heard her say.

  She rolled onto her side, arms around her knees. The story unfolded, over and over in her head.

  At the church, a woman pulled the cover over the keys of the pump organ. All the black-coated people filed out and into buggies and carriages, bound for Ada and Henry’s house. The kitchen was packed with people
smelling of horses and wool. Women poured boiling water over tea leaves in pitchers, passed plates of pie, just as if the kitchen were their own. People ate dutifully, without pleasure. The hired men packed up their belongings; they paused, looking at Flora—before leaving, they filled the wood box with maple chunks, split fine. She watched Ada and Henry’s daughter bundle up the baby whose gown had caused her parents’ deaths. And then, once everyone had left, she stayed in the house all alone, because no one knew what to do with her. Beads of sap froze in the joists and swelled against the sinews of their encasement, waking her with cracks as loud as gunshots. She’d clutched the quilt to her mouth. Ma? Ma? Longing for a ghost to breathe on her cheek, even cause her death if it might take her home to a meadow in the Cotswolds, lacy with the umbels of wild carrots, shining with hovering damselflies. The next morning, neighbours arrived in their wagons to do the chores. They came stomping into the kitchen and fired up the wood stove. They started at the sight of her.

  The Overseer of the Poor arrived. He set his cane against the scarred wainscot, sat in a straight-backed chair. He folded his gloved hands.

  “You’re a Home Child, of course, but we’ve lost track of your papers. In such a case, the province will assume your care. You’ll spend Christmas with children your age. After that, we’ll see what can be done with you.”

  “I want to go back to England. Please. Send me on the boat. Send me home.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He’d patted the back of her hand. She got in his carriage and they drove out of the valley, passing the cemetery where Ada and Henry would be buried in the spring when their bodies were taken from the icehouse.

  Children your age.

  Had the Overseer truly thought she would spend a happy Christmas with the Pleasant Valley family?

  Once she had been placed on Henry and Ada’s farm, she’d tried to change the way she talked, copying the cadences of the hired men. In the one-room schoolhouse where she had gotten a bit of learning on days when she was ahead with her chores, the children had teased her. They had mocked her strange dress and stockings, as if the workhouse were an odour emanating from them, even though the clothes were fresh from Ada’s soap. The children in Pleasant Valley were no different. They imitated her accent, dropped dead flies in her porridge.