The Equations of Love (23 page)

So the next day there were tears when Eleanor was told that her mother hadn’t time to train a puppy, not now, and anyway Nigger the cat wouldn’t like it. And Lilly, with her usual composed air, told the Matron that Mr. Meakins had offered Baby a pup, but that she, Lilly, didn’t want no dogs around, and please to tell him. And thank you, she added. And two weeks later Mr. Meakins regarded Lilly in church with frustration and relief, and after church Lilly did not see Mr. Meakins anywhere near, and she walked home as usual, and even Mrs. Miller soon forgot that Mr. Meakins had twice running spoken to Mrs. Hughes. Lilly had been exhilarated, a trifle disappointed, satisfied, and, on the whole, pleased. Mr. Meakins had been titillated, consumed, frustrated, saved as by fire by Lilly, and was eternally thankful.

Having been thus for a time deranged by love, he married somebody else shortly afterwards.

In quick succession Lilly had two other invitations to change her station. The Valley being what it was, the Valley knew, and approved of this young woman who was devoted to the memory of her husband. Mrs. Butler’s tweeds were cut ruthlessly into spring and winter coats for Eleanor. Lilly, wearing dresses bought at the village shop or chosen from the mail order catalogue, her hair destroyed by the permanent wave
machine in the village, lost her looks. Only her erect, quick, graceful carriage reminded you of beauty, and, if she cared to look at you, her soft brown eyes. She became a dowdy, and unaware of it. Yet, on a second look, she was still the young Mrs. Hughes who had been driven down the dusty Comox road clasping her baby, and she was still Lilly Waller who had waited on white men and Chinamen at Lam Sing’s café. Looking again at her, one would say “I remember you … wasn’t your name Lilly Waller? Yes, I remember you, quite well.”

Between the Matron and Lilly was that relation that exists a few times in some fortunate lives where there is mutual respect and affection and a real though limited pleasure in companionship, with which relative education has little to do. Lilly was ignorant. The Matron was a woman of some education, intuitive, quick-witted, practical, but with a joy in beauty and an unsatisfied aesthetic taste beyond anything that Lilly could ever know. She still stayed in the Valley where aesthetic pleasures were in part denied her because she loved the claims of her work and her people. She had become a personage in her own place. Not beautiful, hardly good-looking, she got on well with men and women. The Matron had come to mean to Lilly everything that Lilly respected or could wish to be. She was the only person with the exception of Eleanor for whom Lilly had ever felt any sentiment of affection. On the Matron’s part, Lilly’s solitary condition, her independence, her uncompromising devotion to her child and to her work, aroused the older woman’s protection and, perhaps, her curiosity. Where I love, I meddle, mused the Matron, and she did. She loved the child, watched her, and corrected her. She meddled. In fact, Mrs. Butler’s influence, fragmentarily, survived in the Matron.

W
hen Eleanor had grown to be nearly seventeen, her mother fell unbearably in love with a man named Paddy Wilkes.

The Matron thought of Paddy Wilkes as the handy man and called him our engineer. Other people called him a janitor. He was a tall fellow with a well-shaped well-brushed head, strong arms, a harmless roving eye for all women, and he was married. Lilly had worked near him year after year; he had mended Lilly’s taps, built her shelves, made all the small repairs that her quick eyes saw were needed; he had long ago tried Lilly out for a mild flirtation and she had ignored him and Paddy had said to himself “No dice;” and during all this time Lilly had not cared at all for him.

And now that her young prettiness had gone, and she had settled into a life of custom and, perhaps, security again as year followed year, Lilly allowed her cloak of self-protection to drop from her. What influences or arts contrive to make men and women lose their hearts and their heads? Perhaps it was the weather.

During that famous hard winter when fresh blizzards of snow continued to clog the roads of the Valley and thaws followed snows and frosts followed thaws, there were many accidents and there was too much illness. The little hospital was almost isolated; it was difficult of access and still it was overcrowded. The small staff was depleted, communications were interrupted, supplies were a constant worry and hazard, and it seemed at last that only the Matron and the housekeeper and Paddy Wilkes – who never left the place – working together often for twenty hours a day, kept things going. When the last thaw came, the Valley seemed to draw a long breath and look about at the ruined roads, caved-in shed-roofs, the acres of split and broken fruit trees, and the dead vines. Farmers and storekeepers, road men and river men, the gardener and Paddy Wilkes began the work of repair, and, as the air softened and spring and buds and birds appeared all over the Valley, the hard winter was miraculously forgotten except by those who had suffered most.

Now that the sense of continued crisis was over Lilly relaxed, and found that the new close bonds had loosened and that the former working relations were re-established. Something had gone. She was very tired, but she missed the crisis and the urgency and the drama (if she had known it) of human need. Yet something beside fatigue had survived those six weeks of strain. Her relations with the Matron who had so much depended on her had become intimate, and she had begun to care for Paddy Wilkes.

Now, each day, she looked for him, she needed him, and he who had seemed to be almost hers was not hers any longer. He belonged to nobody, to everybody, and to his shadowy family who lived somewhere beyond the village. She knew that what she felt for him she had never yet felt for any man. To Lilly it passed for love.

For a very short time she was happy in her secret way. Her love was as when a fruit is opened, and the scent flows out like a wine, never as sweet again. But soon she asked herself Well, what of it? What could she do? There was nothing in it for her, and then the sweetness was gone. If it had not been for Eleanor and for the life that Lilly had arranged for Eleanor (and so for herself) she would have set herself to seduce Paddy if she could, and perhaps she could. At least she would not have been scrupulous. She thought a little scornfully He’s easy … a woman’s only got to give a sign. She would have made talk and trouble but she would not have cared much, and she could have moved on. But about and behind her spread always her intangible and invisible Then, solid as steel, inescapable as past birth or death to come, making her Now always insecure and always scrupulous – for Eleanor. Thus, since her birth, the child Eleanor, all unknowing, had guarded her mother and had made her the blameless and silent woman that she had become, who now was crushing out her love. (But a girl’s gotta right to live, hasn’t she? Sure she’s got a right. No, said Lilly’s austerity, she has no rights at all. None.)

So Lilly banked her fires, painfully, and gave no sign, yet the fires were there. She saw Paddy daily, free with his easy little favours, but she affected not to see, and she was jealous. This was a very hard time for Lilly.

One day she saw Paddy come out of the boiler room wearing his blue overalls. He strolled into the fresh spring sunshine, and lit a cigarette. A new young laundress crossed the yard. Paddy called to her and walked towards her with his easy stride that had some grace in it. Paddy and the laundress stood and talked. Paddy was teasing her, and the girl looked up and laughed back at him. She’s flip, that girl, thought Lilly scowling from the pantry window. She did not like the new laundress.
The girl flexed her arm, clenching her fist and, laughing sideways, she straightened and bent her arm again, showing her strength. Paddy ran his hands up and down the girl’s arm feeling its roundness for the muscle. Still with a hand on her arm, Paddy walked with the girl as far as the laundry door, they stood leaning against the door and talking, he threw his cigarette away, she went in, he turned and went back across the yard with a pleased smile on his face and disappeared into the boiler room. He’s no good, carrying on with every woman he sees, Lilly said angrily to herself. And so she tortured herself with nothings.

She suffered. She knew that she was ridiculous, but she suffered. That girl, that laundress, could stand in the yard with Paddy, and with the eyes of the hospital walls looking on, Paddy could run his hands up and down her arm, and he and she would meet anywhere again. But Mrs. Hughes, mother of Eleanor Hughes, who had worked through the gruelling weeks of winter beside him, who had been close to him, was now as any other, and less than any other. For the winter was over as though it had never been, and Paddy did not stand in the spring sunshine in the hospital yard or anywhere else and dally with Mrs. Hughes (who was known to keep herself to herself), with his hand on her shoulder, on the strength of a hard winter just over. That evening, when her work was finished, Lilly went back to her cottage and looked at herself in the glass. She did not like her face. “You’re a fool,” she said to herself. She pushed back her hair whose soft brightness had gone, and said again to her pale image in the glass “You’re a fool, you’re a fool.” Yet she loved him.

Once on a Saturday afternoon the Matron took Lilly with her and drove in her little car up the Valley towards Harrison. On the far side of the village they passed Paddy walking with a woman and two girls. Paddy carried large paper parcels. His
wife walked beside him, heavily. Lilly saw as the car passed quickly that Mrs. Wilkes, whom she had never observed before, was short and of the shape and size called comfortable. Lilly had never before seen Paddy as a family man for even one short glimpse, and the sight pierced her. She suffered at the sight of the woman who walked beside him, and slept beside him, and had borne him those two tall girls.

The Matron said “That reminds me. I must speak to Paddy. He’s being silly with that new laundress, and he’s spending too much time round the kitchen too. I must check him. I think he’ll take it all right.” And then she thought that she should not have spoken like that of one hospital employee to another, and that one Paddy. Lilly said nothing, but she thought You see, there’s always somebody sees everything. There’s never any freedom … not for me. Things don’t stop, either. They go on and on and on.

That summer she became shrewish. She spoke habitually more sharply to Eleanor. The Matron took her holiday early following the exhausting winter. When she came back to the hospital she looked at Lilly and said “I’ll arrange your time off. You take a good holiday this year for a change. You need it. Go up country or to one of the Gulf Islands. Take Eleanor, or if you want to leave her she can stay with the Sample girls, or I’ll look after her.”

But Lilly was aggravating and stubborn. “No,” she said, “what would I do with a holiday? I don’t care about mountains.”

The Matron knew that Lilly meant that scenery had no charms for her. But she said, “You can at least rest. You need it.”

But Lilly said, “I couldn’t lay around and rest. I’m not used to it. Anyway I’m saving for when Eleanor goes to the city. It won’t be long now.” This was true, but, above all, Lilly would not remove herself from the sight of Paddy Wilkes. She
would torment herself. Her passion for him was thrown away, unrewarding, and not likely to be rewarded, but she could not help herself. As always, she lived her inner life alone, and made no sign. She could not afford that luxury.

Autumn came and the countryside was mellow and beautiful but Lilly did not notice the beauty. Eleanor was changing from a tousled school girl and was growing into neatness and beauty and perception. Lilly had reason to be proud of her daughter, and she was proud and she was hard. It was a wonder that she did not quench the girl’s sparkle that year with her coldness, but youth prevailed over her. Lilly worked harder than was necessary and did any extra tasks that had to be done.

On a golden afternoon Paddy drove the little truck to Mr. Small’s farm. He had in the back of the truck some old windows for the farmer to use in making a hot bed. Lilly and the gardener sat with him in the front seat. The Matron had urged Lilly to have the drive and, both willingly and unwillingly, Lilly had said “Well, I don’t mind if I do.” The gardener decided to stay at the farm and help Mr. Small to build the frame for the seedlings. On the way home Paddy turned off the highway and drove on a winding trail that led to a ridge overlooking the width of the Valley. Scarves of mist and smoke lay upon a landscape of golden poplars, dark conifers, broad meadows, cattle grazing there, the winding river reflecting forest and sky; at the far rim of the Valley were the folded hills, and here and there were farm buildings like dolls’ houses, so small they appeared that they seemed to bear no relation to bedrooms and kitchens within, or to human life.

“Pretty, isn’t it,” said Paddy, and idly put an arm around Lilly. She yielded herself so immediately that he was astonished. He looked at her and her eyes were closed. Her body seemed to melt and flow to him. She felt her banked fires
shoot into flame. Paddy drew her close and his arms went round her and for an endless moment she lay in his arms where she had so much longed to be. A word that was not a word nor a thought but a stab of pain and mortal fear went through and through Lilly, and the word that was the pain that stabbed her was
Eleanor
. The word seemed to destroy her, and yet she could not deny it. She had to obey it. She pulled his arms roughly away, and as he tried to take her again she struck him across the face in a frenzy of fear of herself and sprang out of the truck. She stood in the long grass beside the truck, stiff and tensed but already as if in flight.

Paddy held his hand to his face and roared “Why, you … you … you hell-cat!”

“Don’t you come near me! Don’t you touch me!” cried Lilly in terror of herself and her desire.

“
Touch
you!
Me!
” shouted Paddy angrily, “I wouldn’t touch
you
, not with a ten-foot pole!”

Lilly looked at his furious face with its reddened cheek and she began to tremble.