Two-Gun & Sun (16 page)

My father's disapproval heightened the attraction. I can see that now. The rift between us had begun years before I met John, and now it gaped even wider. Had swimming really been the start of it?

I was inspired from an early age by famous women swimmers. They competed in races against men. One of them won a twenty-two mile race down the Danube, and tried three times to cross the English Channel, a similar distance. The west arm of Kootenay Lake was almost the same distance, but because I was still a girl, I figured I could practise first by jumping in further down the arm. Robbie was all for it, and said he could row the boat next to me. That touched me because the boys, the twins especially, didn't do much with me anymore. But this was not mere play. This was an event, a challenge, and each practice would not only strengthen me for the full length, but build public interest. He had a friend at the newspaper who could wait on the beach with a camera. I'd be famous, too.

Ever since the twins had shrieked over my bare chest, I had been swimming by myself, and in those neck-to-knee, wool-skirted costumes that were heavy as a sack of rocks when wet. For a swim of that duration I needed something with less drag. One of my brother's old striped leggings and undervest would be lighter.

Don't tell father, we agreed.

There is a wonderfully awful sensation when you submerge yourself into a lake. Weeds stroke your arms. Fish nudge at your calves, your inner thighs, and when you put your face under, the whole world turns green.

I felt fast as lightning, my arms slicing the surface. So cold, at first, but then the heat of what you are trying to do takes hold, you have energy, and just a bit of cheek as you picture yourself rising from the waters, triumphant. But as the hours slid past, you got tired. I got tired. At one point my arms felt dead.

I can't do it, I told Robbie. Water up my nose, down my throat. Coughing, choking.

He pulled me up into the boat and I sat in the bow, blanket around my shoulders, shivering, defeated. I pictured the teasing twins, my doubting neighbours and school chums, the newspaper photographer walking away, disappointed. I threw down the blanket and swung a leg over the side.

That's my girl, Robbie said, and I slipped back into the dark waters.

We brought no food. That would bring on cramps and our father had lectured long about the dangers of that.

As we neared the beach and the promenade I could see a crowd gathering. I pulled myself out of the water, rubber-limbed, forcing myself to smile in preparation of camera bulbs flashing. Then I heard them, shrieks of laughter, gasps.

My father was there, red-faced. We can see what you had for breakfast! he bellowed, and threw a blanket over me. Robert, into the truck with her right now!

There was no photographer. Father had chased him away. I felt my face crumple and mouth turn down, and wrapped the blanket tight as I ran after Robbie. This was to be my victory, and my father had ruined it.

For several days after he berated us for our lack of concern about safety, about scandalous attire, Robbie increasingly sullen in his presence, me, venomous in my defence. Robbie was right there beside me, not standing on the shore with that whistle! You try swimming in a bloody wool bathing suit with yards of skirt and see how quickly you sink! You don't care about my safety. You're just worried what others will say!

We were never the same after that. Fraternizing with a pacifist was one more way to get back at him. Women got the right to vote a year before the war ended, and my father lost no time pointing out that I got it only because my brothers had enlisted. I lost it when they returned, and wouldn't get it back for another year, until the law was changed for good. The hurt of that was relieved by the sheer joy of seeing them again, though they were not their old selves. Robbie came back empty-eyed and grieving for Will, more so than the twins, who had each other, and me, who hadn't seen what they had seen. Once more, we argued with our father. Robbie wondered aloud how our father wasn't a pacifist himself given what had happened to poor Will. And on it went. It's one more reason Robbie eventually moved to Australia, and me, here. I breathed in raggedly at the view from this window, grey upon grey. He was glad to be rid of us both, our father.

*

My leg still throbbed the next day, and to take pressure off it I sat behind the counter to read, my foot resting on a shelf. My call for ads had produced a swift and unexpected response from an outfit down the coast in San Francisco. I was delighted, even when I eventually realized it was addressed to Uncle, which meant the company couldn't have seen my call or my announcement that I was the new publisher. But an ad meant money. It proposed flights up the coast, with stops at various ports of call including here. The date of the inaugural flight: September 27. Incredible. Twelve days from now and two days before the opera. Again, I felt green and tense as well as excited, thinking about the end of the month. I would have no trouble finding news for our first edition. Though why the craft would stop here, I couldn't imagine, not at first.

Gradually, I saw the appeal. Even miners took holidays, and a few hours up in the air, especially away from all this grey, would draw those who sweated below ground. The flight company must have figured that larger stops along the route—Portland, Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver—would make this one worthwhile.

The letter and ad had come in a package that included plates, much as the opera company's had, this one a relief of the airship itself, a Zeppelin. In the palm of my hand it looked more like the impression of a bullet, and I was dazzled at once with the idea of a design for my own masthead one day, its snout firing us into the future.

I gathered up the package and its contents and carried it straight to the pressroom to leave for Vincent. I knew my foolish announcement was still in his thoughts. This would brighten them. He had never mentioned seeing that stinking thing on my doormat. Good. It couldn't possibly help my situation for him to know that it was a result of that story.

I had already limped to the post office and back, though I was supposed to keep my leg elevated. Now I had an appointment with Meena for my fitting. I walked quickly, excited. This ad from San Francisco meant money, yes. It also meant progress, bringing us modern transportation, sleek and silver and flying high above the filthy fog. The airship might be a common sight on the east coast and in Europe, but not here. It would ignite the imagination. And the fact that both money and progress had arrived in one bundle charged me with an energy that took the pain from my wounded leg. First the opera, now this.

*

Meena shrieked when she saw the stitches. It looks like a tarantula crawling up your leg!

It's all right, I told her. I just have to keep it dry.

Your beautiful dress, she said.

Until she saw the butchery, as she called it, Meena had been pinning and clucking. Your slender waist. Your strong shoulders. The material drapes beautifully from them.

I twisted around in the three-way mirror and only now saw how truly ugly it was. The back of my calf blighted not only with three stitches to seal the wound but a knot on either end.

Black? Meena cried. A pale peach is all that was needed.

It was all I had with me.

Why didn't he at least re-do the stitches?

Doctor said I did a good job.

Doctor again, is it?

It doesn't hurt anymore, I lied.

The possibility of pain didn't seem to concern her. I hadn't realized I'd been limping, but she told me she had seen there was something wrong the minute I walked through the door.

You dragged your leg behind you like a wounded soldier, she said. I thought perhaps you had pulled a muscle getting off your bicycle.

I hadn't brought the black dress. Even Meena couldn't fix it—split up one side, hem ripped right off. And I could imagine her shrieks if I had. What is that? An old rug?

I turned back to face the mirror. The gown was everything that she had described, the burnt-orange silk flashing through the slits in the deep blue.

With your limp, she said, it will flash like Morse code. S.O.S. Woman injured. The stitches will show with each step. We have to lengthen it. We have no choice. Oh, that will ruin the flow.

She shook her head. Which means, she added, we might have to widen the skirt, too.

I tried to picture the wide skirt, and saw John's wife, again. I shook my head.

Can we try something else?

She crouched to measure and then sat back. And have you an escort, yet? No? There's not much time.

She pinned and unpinned, measured and re-measured, muttering the whole time.

I have it, she said. Same blue, but we'll have to get rid of the paprika altogether. Yes, well, my dear, there's no helping that, now, is there? Taking it to mid-calf length, ghastly. Not a flash of orange but a full assault.

She re-sketched the shift and, just around the knee, her pencil flying, added a froth of material that would cascade at varying lengths about the legs.

You see? Pale, to contrast with a midnight blue sheath. That way it can be longer and wider below the knee without looking it.

White? I suggested. I want to look business-like, remember.

Too stark, she said. A blush.

I smiled but I wasn't happy. I'd gone from bold to delicate. The bells above the door sounded, then. It was one of Meena's best customers, the one with the crooked corset.

Miss, she said.

On her arm was Morris, and his eyebrows shot up when he saw me.

Mr. Cohen—I said.

My dears, he rasped. Morning to you all, and you especially my lovely Miss Sinclair. I really must be on my way. Business, you know!

But—

I had wanted to ask about his investment, such as how soon? Bills were piling up. He was gone though, before I could get the next word out. Had he not noticed the very blight on my leg that had caused Meena to shriek? Perhaps not, or he would be concerned, if nothing else, about how my injury might affect the business.

Lila, Meena said, would you mind? Just a hem check.

I limped aside to let her customer past. She climbed on top of a stool.

Meena held a sheet up before her, and when she lowered it her customer had dropped her street skirt and was wrapped in a vivid green silk that barely covered her bottom.

I've been reading your newspaper, she told me as she balanced on her perch. Terrible, that shooting in the hotel. I heard nothing but jokes till I read your accounting.

At last a compliment, and in gratitude I shared a summary of the next issue.

I didn't know girls worked in the tunnels, she replied.

Worked! I said it with a funny laugh that caused Meena to stop pinning and her customer to look up. Both faces, expectant.

I told them they were going to be privy to things I could never print in the paper, and then I described my discovery of the girl and that man, of what appeared to be going on, at first, what was really going on, and how I wondered was there a child on the way.

The woman pushed Meena's hand away and leapt down from the stool, demanding, Is she charging for it?

It was the sort of reaction I was hoping for, only I hadn't expected her hot concern an inch from my nose. I stepped back.

It was a problem, no matter what the answer. If the girl charged, then she was taking work from these painted women. If she didn't, then she was doing for free what they charged money for. Either way, she was interfering with their business.

With a shimmy to remove the green silk, then two snaps of her garters and another shimmy to pull her street skirt back on, she was gone.

Meena sat back on her heels and looked up at me for a moment or two longer than made me comfortable. She made no comment, other than to sweep the air with a hand to indicate I should climb up on the stool. Still, there was a clear censure behind her request to have me stand immediately where that customer had stood. I did as she instructed, toes twitching from the proximity. And rightly so. After all, who was I the other morning, on the floor like that, taking longer than necessary to pull up my strap? My sheer chemise had been as vivid as any green silk.

As Meena measured and scribbled we heard the throaty rumble of a vessel, most likely a tug boat towing a coal hulk to or from the upper wharf.

At last she stood and said, Now my dear, let's see those fingers.

She lifted both of my hands.

Will the ink come out?

Most of it, I said.

Most of it—my dear, dear Lila. Gloves, long elegant ones past the elbow. That's the only solution.

Voices shouting in the street stopped her scribbling. It was a lustful sound we weren't used to hearing in this town.

Her heels clicked to the window where she cried, The opera troupe! Lila come see. They must have hired their own boat.

That was the sound we'd heard. I lurched after her, my nasty stitch work throbbing again from all that standing.

A short stretch of street was visible in the misty daylight. It had filled with a lively procession in all the colours from the poster, made more brilliant by the blue-grey backdrop of the town. There was a diva in a crimson dress with a tool belt slung bandolier-style across her juddering bosom. A man in jade green followed, pulling a cart of luggage, another in gold carrying boards across his shoulders. Then three musicians in tuxedos, gone in the knees, I noted as they passed, one pushing a red wheelbarrow filled with a case that must hold a cello, certainly a cello with its womanly curves, the other, lumpy cases in each hand that might contain a violin and a trumpet, and a third with a flute glittering from his jacket pocket and a leather box that might contain a drum or tambourine. Bringing up the rear was a man who seemed neither player nor musician, in a brown pin-striped suit and matching vest festooned with coils of rope over each shoulder and a bundle of tarps strapped to his back.

They stopped to unload before the iron skeleton and dome across the street. The diva bent forward, massive cleavage like a slice of the Fraser Canyon, to drive tent pegs into the ground with a hammer from her tool belt. The yellow and green men took the tarps from the brown man and began hoisting canvas over rope and across the top of the skeleton, erecting walls where a moment ago the gloomy view was the rambling mountainside through the iron framework.