The Equations of Love (19 page)

Lilly, holding Baby firmly in the bend of her left arm, looked at the square white house covered with vines of which she did not know the name and banked with flowers which she had never before seen, and then she walked in at the gate, up the path, and rang the bell. The door was soon opened by a woman who, Lilly felt, was a commander, but not, she thought, the commander of the house whom she had come to see. The woman was fresh-faced, with an open expression which clouded when she saw Baby. She wore a black dress and a small white apron. As she continued to look at Baby her face hardened. Lilly was alarmed, and looked at the woman with the soft and touching look which had become habitual to her.

“Please, I’ve come to see Mrs. Butler about the place,” she said.

“Come in,” said the woman gloomily. She preceded Lilly into a hall, opened the door of a room, and said, “Wait there. I will tell Madam.”

Lilly stepped into the room and her lips were moving. Madam, they said silently. Madam. Madam. The labials made no sound. She looked round her at a room which seemed to her at that moment like a pool of mellow light into which she and Baby had arrived. She ventured to sit down on a high dark chair and arranged Baby against her soft breast.

Above the mantelpiece of a neat open grate in which no fire burned was a large mirror framed in gilt. Lilly looked wonderingly at this. Towards one end of the mantelpiece were two ancient pieces of Chinese pottery, a hound and a horse. The melancholy hound, of a fair Chinese yellow glaze, held his head lifted as if listening for centuries for a master who did not come. Each elegant rib showed finely below the skin. The blue horse, standing beside the yellow hound, grazed peacefully forever where no grass grew, upon the shining mantelpiece. The hound and the horse were reflected in the shining mirror which held the room as in a picture. Two hounds and two horses. Soft broken light lay on the walls and on the dark shining floor. Everywhere was light or a dark shine. Light and shade falling through large vine leaves moving outside the window made moving pools of light and shade in this yellow room. Lilly’s gaze returned to the hound and the horse, creatures detached from ordinary living, motionless yet somehow aware, in a world of their own. I’d be scared to touch them, she thought, I’d be scared to dust them. She heard voices.

One voice was low and broke only occasionally upon a voice raised, distressed and a little angry. Lilly got up quickly and went to the partly opened door. Baby made fretty resentful sounds. “Sh sh then,” said Lilly, patting, and listened.

“And me looking after you all these years, Madam, and leaving you with a young woman
with
a baby! You and the Major have no call to start having a baby in the house, Madam.”
Madam
, murmured Lilly, listening.

The soft voice spoke but Lilly could distinguish no words.

The agitated voice broke almost into a wail. “I’d never have an easy minute, Madam, leaving you with a young woman with a baby. I’d as lief not go home and let Dad go hang as leave you like this! And how do you know she’s respectable?”

There was a low laugh, and the owner of the quiet voice must have risen and moved near the door, for Lilly heard the words, “Now, Esther, Esther, you must trust me not to do anything silly. I must see the girl. No … I won’t promise not to … now,
Esther!
…” and from the other voice “Oh,
Madam!
”

Madam
. Lilly’s lips moved, and she slipped back to her chair. The door opened. A woman came in, and Lilly rose to her feet.

Mrs. Butler always remembered Lilly as she first saw her, standing in the mellow light of the Chinese room, this tall fair girl in black with the primness of small white edging at her neck, and the widowhood of a short black veil from her black sailor hat, with the wide black sleeves of her blouse, with the taffy-coloured hair brushed high and neat under the hat, with her youth, with her creamy pallor, with her brown eyes soft with shyness, her agreeable snub nose, and her baby folded in a white shawl against her breast. Mrs. Butler melted from her prepared position of a lady about to interview a domestic to the warmth of a woman seeing before her a young widow with her child. “Sit down,” she said, and smiled.

“Thank you, Madam,” said Lilly. She heard herself say the word with great surprise. It was not difficult.
Madam
. She felt, rather than knew, that this word was a strong weapon that she would use to win this house from Esther for Baby.

“Let me see your baby,” said Mrs. Butler and, coming close, moved the lacy shawl from the little face. The two women looked down at the sleeping face of Baby, at the dark lashes against the soft cheeks, at the infinite age-old marvel of the sleeping infant. They raised their eyes, looked at each other above the sleeping child, and smiled in their wisdom.

Lilly saw a woman of middle size, slight, with iron grey hair. She’s ugly, thought Lilly as she looked shyly at the long
and rather horselike and bony face that is sometimes the curious beauty of an Englishwoman. No, she’s not ugly, the girl thought again, she’s different to me. She looks kinda nice. Yes. I want to be here. I want Baby to be near her. We gotta be here. Safe. Madam. I’ll
make
her. I’ll fight for this job. I’ll beat that Esther. We’re going to stay right here. I’m not going to take Baby to no dump and people talking talking. Madam.

“Are you … a widow?” asked Mrs. Butler gently in that voice whose quietness was unfamiliar to Lilly.

Lilly nodded. (How like a child she is, thought the older woman.) “Mr. Hughes … he was kicked … it was a horse … he died … a coupla months before Baby was born … at the ranch … and I couldn’t stick it there … we was way off out of town and no neighbours … and I come west … I couldn’t stay there any more.” Lilly blinked wet lashes.

“Have you no relatives?” asked Mrs. Butler very gently.

“I got a sister back east,” said Lilly, looking down and then up at Mrs. Butler with the full impact of her innocence, “but,” shaking her head, “I wouldn’t go back to her … she never liked me marrying Mr. Hughes … she never liked him … and when she didn’t like Mr. Hughes, and him … gone … I couldn’t go back to her.”

How true, how true, how sad, thought Mrs. Butler, looking with compassion at the girl.

“But I can work, Madam, and I’m good and healthy,” said Lilly earnestly, “I can cook and wait on table and I guess I can clean house if you tell me how … Anything you tell me, I’ll do. Madam, give Baby and me a chance! I want Baby to live here. She hasn’t got no folks, and I want to bring her up the way Mr. Hughes would like … he was better than me, and his folks was better than me, and I wouldn’t want to go to his folks because …” Lilly looked quickly around the room,
at the mirror, at the yellow hound forever listening, at the blue horse forever feeding, at the curtains of strange yellow stuff, at the dark unfamiliar furniture, and back to Mrs. Butler.

“I don’t want Baby to grow up common like me, Madam. I want her to grow up like Mr. Hughes’s folks!” Mrs. Butler looked at the wily Lilly. How incredibly naïve the girl is, she thought. How simple.

“If you’ll try us, Madam, Baby and me will do our best,” said Lilly humbly, “and Baby isn’t any trouble, she’s not a cryer, and you’d never be bothered by her. You’ll never hear her, Madam.” And then Lilly did a very disarming thing. What with the two large tears, real enough, that trembled on her lower lids, and then rolled slowly down her cheeks, her little nose felt damp. She sniffed, and slowly wiping the agreeable snub with the back of her hand, she looked earnestly over the back of her hand at Mrs. Butler, like any child, and the thing was done.

And, said Mrs. Butler to herself, she calls me Madam, how strange! And to think that I haven’t asked for references, or spoken of wages, but because she says Madam, and wiped her nose like that, and loves her baby, and is a widow, and wants to come, I know I’m going to take her. And I’ll have to fight Esther … and Maurice too.

“That’s a promise?” she said out loud, looking kindly but with authority at Lilly. “You can do the work, and the baby
won’t
take too much of your time, and
won’t
disturb us? What time off do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t want time off, Madam, not while Baby’s little. I can take her in the garden … or anywhere … on fine days when convenient … I want to stay right here, I don’t want to go away, not while Baby’s little.”

I’ll be safe here, thought Lilly. If I start going into Courtenay there’s sure someone going to know me some day
and then Baby’s chances’d be done. I gotta keep away from people and stay right here oh for ever so long. I don’t want no time off.

“What would you like me to call you?” asked Mrs. Butler.

“To call me?” said Lilly wonderingly. “Oh, just my name, just Mrs. Hughes, Madam. Walter … Mr. Hughes … wouldn’t like anything else, I don’t fancy.”

Walter Hughes, Mr. Walter Hughes, what would Lilly do without you? In life you were nothing, not even a shade. In death you are the strong support of Lilly Waller and her pretty baby.

Later in the afternoon Mrs. Butler ended her description of her interview with Lilly by saying “– so, Maurice, I took her.”

And Major Butler said, “So from now on we have to have a baby in this house because her mother hasn’t got a handkerchief and blows her nose by hand,” and grumbled accordingly.

His wife laughed. “All right, put it that way if you like.”

“I didn’t know before this that you liked babies!”

“Well … not collectively …”

But, four years later, Baby, who was now Eleanor, and a grave pretty child, had become the pet of Major Butler and trotted round the garden after him as he puttered about, or sat quiet in the boat while Major Butler pulled slowly on the oars. And she was the pet of the big dog and of the little dog. And she was the pet of Mrs. Butler who had nothing to occupy her but books, and flowers, and a little ill-health. And Eleanor was dressed in little smocked dresses ordered by Mrs. Butler from a place called Liberty’s in London. And Lilly blended with her worship of the child a good deal of shrewdness and hardness, keeping Eleanor well in hand.

“Don’t take Eleanor away, Mrs. Hughes, she’s not bothering me.”

“Oh no, Madam, she’s been with you long enough. Come, Eleanor.” And the grave little girl would go.

And Eleanor was growing up in a happy world of ordered calm and pleasure, and knew no other. Her mother told her sometimes about her father, tall and fine, who had been killed long ago by a kick from a horse. “Was it Farver’s horse?” “Yes, Father had a lot of horses.” “More horses than Major Buckler?” “Yes, more horses than Major Butler.”

And now Walter Hughes, established firmly as almost a memory in the little daughter’s mind, faded, and faded. There seemed no further need of him at present. He remained established in the past but the past was over. Lilly lived only in the long peaceful present and in her child’s future. Walter Hughes’ work was done and he might go. Lilly did not exactly discard him, but because she had never known faith in the living or the dead, Mr. Walter Hughes, no longer of any particular use, faded out, out, out, until he might some day be needed again.

B
y the time Eleanor was six years old she had three gods and her mother. Her mother was not a god, she was simply an extension of herself. She had a slave, and she had a companion who refused to be owned and could not be coerced – the cat. Eleanor’s gods were Major and Mrs. Butler and Leo, the big dog. As Leo sat upon his haunches looking majestically round him, Eleanor, standing, could look into his face, caressing his ears, and Leo suffered her. Her slave was a nondescript faithful little black and tan dog who could be dressed in doll’s capes and hats, and would sit, miserably, in the doll’s pram that Mrs. Butler had given to Eleanor. There was the shining house with books and pictures and stories and a yellow Chinese dog and a horse that must not be touched. There was the garden with grass and trees and flower beds and a vegetable garden and raspberry canes and gooseberry bushes that hid her as she stood. And there was Major Butler squatting down on the soil, planting and thinning, or reaching up to cut and prune, all in slow time in grey weather or sun, always with a pipe in his mouth, and nearly always with Leo and Eleanor and the little dog somewhere near, very busy about
their immediate concerns, until Eleanor’s mother would call her, and her world would change into being washed and sitting up at the kitchen table and eating her lunch like a good girl. And there was the sea, and the shore that she and her mother sat upon while the two dogs roamed about on their business, and Eleanor soon got up and ran about finding things. And sometimes the haughty cat, friendly for a few minutes, would walk behind them to the beach, and sit upon a log, and survey things, taking into its cat mind what of the meaningless sea and shore, and then would vanish into the meaningful woods and grasses. And there was Major Butler’s rowboat, and fishing that was important and she couldn’t go if she was going to be a nuisance. And she could be with Mrs. Butler for hours together, playing beside her on the floor, or listening to stories. But Major Butler was her number one god. There were other people who touched the rim of her world. There was Mr. Meeker who knew her when she was a baby, and drove into the store three or four times a week, and there were the people in the store, and there were visitors (but then her mother kept her in the kitchen beside her), and there was church sometimes when the clergyman came from Courtenay, and there were cobwebs in the church, such cobwebs, till her mother and the lady in the store gave it a good cleaning. And as Eleanor grew up into this life of happy order, her mother who had been Lilly Waller, grew into it too. And there was the sand spit, and on the sand spit the little cemetery where Eleanor loved to play. Among the blowing grasses eternally blowing on the spit were the small headstones, some straight, some leaning this way and that, and on the headstones were the names of Fan – a dog, or Tom – a cat, or Butty – a goat, or Poll – a parrot who lived to a ripe old age, said the headstone. And all these little animals and birds that lay buried with ceremony and remembrance upon the
Comox sand spit had been pets or mascots of British men-of-war that had come up from the naval station at Esquimalt for target practice. Or at least, the little headstones commemorated some little animal who had died at sea – “Nigger the best cat the Warspite ever had.” There were great names of ships and little names of animal pets loved by the seamen. Here lay a tortoise – or the name of a tortoise “lost at sea.” Lilly would spell out the names – sometimes fading – of cat and dog while Eleanor played among the small headstones, lonely but not desolate, among the waving grasses on the bare spit. It was a pleasant place. And then they would see Major Butler rowing slowly towards the spit, and know that he had finished his cohoe fishing, and they would gather up their things and wait for him. Sometimes Mrs. Butler came too, but not often. And then it was teatime and the day was over, and while her mother got dinner for Major and Mrs. Butler, Eleanor must stay in the bedroom with her picture-books and toys. And by the time that Eleanor was nearly seven years old she had learned to put her self to bed, and often when Lilly’s work was done she would go upstairs and find Eleanor asleep with the lost look of childhood – who shall describe it? – her softly curving arms thrown wide, among a litter of dolls. And the next day was like the last.