Lily Fairchild. Don Gutteridge
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from within.
“Get a rollin’ boil, Charlotte, an’ keep at it for five to seven minutes. Nothin’ else can be done.”
Bridie took three boxes of berries from the rack and set them beside the eggs and carrots on the porch step. “There you are, Charlotte. That’ll be ninety-six cents. Any changes for next week? The corn’ll be in most likely.”
Charlotte surrendered the money and stood watching them leave. Lily always lingered behind a bit, ears pricked.
“Scruffy little ragamuffin, ain’t she?”
“You think with the prices Bridie charges she’d be able to put a decent dress on the girl.”
“Might even be pretty, don’t you think, Lottie?”
“It’d take some scrubbin’, I’m afraid.”
Bridie always walked steadily forward; she was not a lingerer. Once she turned and said, “Don’t let those two old maids go puttin’ a lot of tom-fool notions in your head.”
The Templeton house was the most attractive of their stops, though by no means the most ostentatious in town. It wasn’t even brick, but the siding was lovingly lapped and painted a shade of blue that resembled the River when the ice leaves it in March. The gardens here flourished, invariably dazzling Lily with their lush variety: delphinium, giant poppies, sunflowers, peonies, arboured roses, and marigolds and lilies with the tang of marsh still in them.
Mrs. Alice Templeton almost always intercepted them at the side door. Trim, silver-haired, neatly attired, smiling with both eyes, she invariably asked them to come into the front den, to cool or warm or dry themselves, depending on the season. Sometimes Maurice Templeton, a prominent lawyer, was discovered snoozing there into a gray volume on his lap. Lily feasted on the sight of book-lined walls, porcelain figurines and blue chinaware displayed in an adjoining dining room. The odour of pipe-tobacco lingered and stirred the memory.
On a lucky day there was Ceylon tea and tarts, and talk.
“Your brother’s daughter, you say? I can certainly see your eyes there, no question about that.”
“She’s had no upbringin’, mind you, but she’s a good worker.”
“Another cake, Lily?”
“No, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Go ahead, looks like it’d do you good.”
Lily glanced at Aunt Bridie. “No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Say, Bridie, my girls are both at boarding school in London, as you know, and I’ve never thrown away any of their dresses or slips. God knows, there’s a pile of bonnets too in a trunk –”
Bridie rose suddenly to her full height. “Thank you for the tea, missus, but we really must be gettin’ along. Got a schedule to keep.” In fact, the Templetons were always their last stop.
“But I haven’t paid you yet.”
“Next time,” Bridie replied; they were already at the door. Once away, Bridie tried to make light of their hasty departure. “We’d never get away from the old gabbler. Never did hear anyone like to carry on so and fritter away so much time. Besides, your uncle’d wear his shoes to bed if we left him alone too long.”
Then, more seriously, she added, “They’re all the same, Lily. You remember that. Can’t leave off interferin’ with people’s lives.”
Lily was not sure. Was it “interferin” to offer unused dresses and bonnets? And that triggered another thought: why had Luc never delivered father’s trunks? And why had she not heard from her father? She was sure he loved her and she thought often of his kindly face.
Come winter, the physical labour of planting, weeding and harvesting was exchanged for equally arduous indoor tasks. Bridie made quilts and candles and soon discovered that Lily’s fingers were more nimble than her own. Her chores in the barn and coops never ended, nor her share of the cooking, regular mending and wood chopping when Chester’s back acted up, as it did more often of late. Lily found the fine needlework as fatiguing as hoeing lettuce; but she loved arranging the harlequin swatches of the quilts, composing their colours into prescribed patterns. By April Bridie and Lily had stitched eight quilts that would bring ready cash to tide them over the lean spring months. With candle sales, there was sufficient to buy them each a pair of new leather boots from McWhinney’s Haberdashery.
By the third summer, after her fourteenth birthday, Lily Ramsbottom was making half of their deliveries alone. More and more, Bridie left the egg-and-vegetable side of the business to her, while she herself drummed up further trade in the expanding sections back of Christina Street or scouted the competition’s prices at the Saturday market beside the St. Clair Inn. As far as Lily could tell, Bridie was never tempted by the displays of finery in the shops along Front Street.
“Tell me, Lily dear, what Church is your aunt raisin’ you in?” asked Mrs. McHarg, sweetly, for her husband’s sake.
“The green peppers’re good today, ma’am. Crisp as ice.”
“You areattendin’ a church of some kind, aren’t you?”
“No, ma’am.” Lily felt her eyes drop, a flush of red staining her cheeks.
“You poor, poor thing, you.” The woman’s voice trembled with delicious shock. “An’ why not?” she ventured.
“We work on Sundays,” Lily said, looking up proudly.
Mrs. McHarg was speechless. Lily was already giving Benjamin a nudge when she heard faintly from the back doorway: “That woman oughta be hanged!” Then: “Lily, you tell that so-called aunt of yours not to bother comin’ round here again!”
Lily did no such thing.
Lily loved the boarding houses, especially the rambling clapboard establishment on Lochiel Street run by Char Hazelberry. If she wished, which was often, Lily stepped right inside the cozy kitchens where aproned servants cooked and scrubbed and gossiped; where some of the resident working men – dilatory, hungover or recuperative – lingered about to tease them. When Lily questioned the landlady’s name, Badger McCovey whispered breezily in her ear: “Short for Charity, but she ain’t got none, get it?” Walleye Watson, his good peeper next to hers, declared, “It’s the way she cooks the food!” He tried to wink, with absurd results, and she laughed with the rest of the room.
“Hi, toots, gonna take me to the shindig, Saird’y?”
“I get first dance, promise?”
“Not me, I’ll take the last one, eh Lily gal?”
“Don’t you pay them geezers no mind,” Char would tell Lily. “Most of them’s well past it anyways! They couldn’t raise dust in a hen-house.”
Lily usually left Char’s place feeling faintly wicked but welcomed and cheered, – and humming all the way to Exmouth.
Lily carried the last order of the day to the back of the Templeton’s blue cottage, under the rose arbour in primary bloom and into the meadow of the Templeton’s dooryard. She was delighted to see the cedar table covered with a linen cloth and set for tea. The missus must be planning a garden party, she thought. And by the looks of the fancy cakes and scones and the silver tea-set, the company expected must be the hoity-toity. Mrs. Templeton popped from her shed, brushing back her uncovered hair, and swept across the lawn to Lily.
“Well, young lady, don’t just stand there lookin’, sit down.”
Mrs. Templeton showed Lily the proper way to pour tea and how to hold a scone with three digits and some dignity. She smiled sideways and whispered, “Wouldn’t want to upset the good ladies of the town, now would we?” She took Lily’s arm and escorted her about the garden, explaining carefully how one nursed and groomed such unruly beauty, prompting Lily to recall and speak about the wild blossoms of the townships.
“Well,