A Map Of Glass Part 7

"This stuff is just blowing around. There's a storm coming through, though. We're proud of our storms here." The currents of air, the station master cheerfully explained, coming from the far-off Great Lakes encountered one another directly over this region and, "By Jesus," he slapped his gloved hands together, "don't we get snow!" He took Branwell's arm. "No more trains today," he said. "Let's go for a drink."

That night, as Branwell lay on a straw mattress in a room above the bar, his sleep was interrupted by the wind rattling the windows and a strange, vigorous thumping. "Just the ghost," Kelterborn told him when he inquired the following morning. "We've asked him to keep it down, but he won't. He hates being imprisoned here, prefers to wander."

Kelterborn was a large, pink German fellow who presided over his bar with an air of pompous dignity mixed with that of boredom and mild disapproval. Branwell had already learned that his taciturn host was not inclined to give advice of any kind political, elemental, spiritual and he declined with a shrug to discuss the state of the road. He refused, in effect, to commit to anything beyond the price of the drink in your hand, or that of your bed for the night. His smooth, broad forehead glowed. The bottles behind him on the shelf shone. The Quebec heater roared. And, as the station master had said, his beer was good. Branwell was not, in fact, much of a drinker, but he had consumed enough beer the previous night to produce both a morning headache and a general sense of unreality into which the notion of the ghost fit nicely.

"Like you," Kelterborn offered, "the ghost has been trying to get out to Fryfogel's. Been here for a couple of weeks at least, might be here all winter."

Branwell rose at this point and, eager for some oxygen, headed for the porch, which, like the rest of the structure where he was sheltering, was made of rough-hewn logs. When he was finally able to push the front door open against the wind, it became evident that several Great Lake currents had collided during the night. A prodigious quant.i.ty of snow was falling from the sky, adding inches to the deep white sea that stretched off in all directions over the acres of towns.h.i.+ps that Branwell knew were named after the entrepreneurs who had cut them clean, divided them up, and sold them off. Everything else was named after European towns and villages. How absurd, he thought, that the spot where he now stood, a place where nothing happened but a succession of blizzards as far as he could tell, should be named after a tourist spa situated in a picturesque corner of the Austrian Alps. Even more absurd that the collection of squatters shanties and jagged stumps that he had heard existed farther west was apparently called London, and that the two major rivers in the vicinity became, therefore, the Thames and the Little Thames. Did this not show a singular lack of imagination? Branwell thought that it did.

When a few moments later he went back inside he was introduced to the ghost, a certain G. Shromanov, whose unp.r.o.nounceable Slovakian first name had been long ago contracted to "Ghost," and who, according to his own admission, was primarily a stableman. Being born to love horses, he had worked at all three inns on the road, until the railway made the full-time care of horses almost completely unnecessary. Fortunately, however, he was also a rope-maker, a kettlesmith, and had been for at least a year roving through these parts searching for bears as a would-be bear trainer. He proudly confessed that, although he had been born in Europe, he could also read and write in English, and was occasionally able to acquire extra income by writing business letters, sometimes even love letters, for those who had never mastered the alphabet. Added to all this, he confided, he could mend pots, make medicine, tell fortunes, administer spells and curses, sing while accompanying himself on the mandolin, and perform a sort of speedy Spanish stomp that required much night practice to keep it up to the mark hence the thumping that had interrupted Branwell's sleep. With much clapping of hands on either side of his head, Ghost demonstrated several noisy staccato steps. The floor shook, the bottles behind the bar clanked, Branwell's headache throbbed.

"Fryfogel's his best customer," Kelterborn announced.

For what? Branwell wondered. Bear training? Cursing? He couldn't help but remember Fryfogel's remarks about the people who worked the road.

"Best customer," Ghost agreed. "He'll pay any amount of cash to get his fortune told, he'll pour any amount of whiskey. I already predicted that his walls wouldn't be decorated, that you wouldn't be arriving for d.a.m.n near twenty years."

"Well," said Branwell, "you were wrong about that because here I am." He lifted the wooden valise that served as his paintbox as proof of his trade.

"Oh, you're here all right." Ghost settled into the chair nearest to Branwell. "You're here, but you're not there, if you catch my meaning. Let me see your palm."

Branwell offered his hand to Ghost and then bestowed an amused smile on the other patrons in the bar.

"No, sir," said Ghost. "Not a sign of the Fryfogel in the immediate future. In fact, I see no trace of the walls of an inn at all...which is odd because I can can see the Tavern Brook out the window. And wait...beside the window there see the Tavern Brook out the window. And wait...beside the window there is is a painted wall but it's far, far in the future and, even so, there is nothing about an inn in these parts, nothing about a tavern, wait, no, there is something about a tavern, but not that tavern, there's a painted a painted wall but it's far, far in the future and, even so, there is nothing about an inn in these parts, nothing about a tavern, wait, no, there is something about a tavern, but not that tavern, there's a painted ceiling ceiling, of all things." He glanced quizzically at Branwell. "Wouldn't you go blind doing that? Wouldn't you all the time have paint dripping in your eyes?"

Branwell had no idea. "I never paint ceilings," he said.

"No you don't," said Ghost, "not yet. But, there's no doubt about it, you will."

Five days later, in the midst of one of the continuing squalls, Branwell trudged through the snow to the station. He had not been able to reach Fryfogel's Tavern; in fact, the weather had been so consistently bad that at times it seemed impossible to believe that beyond the somewhat greasy interior and smoky ambience of Kelterborn's log establishment, a village of some sort existed. He had done absolutely nothing during the course of the preceding days except inquire repeatedly about meteorological conditions in hopes that he might be able to wait out the storm and listen to Ghost whom he had discovered was a voracious reader of newspapers when he could get his hands on them tell more tales than he cared to hear about Tiger Dunlop, John Galt, and some other confident tyc.o.o.n called Talbot who was in full control of all the lands at the western end of the lakes. These much-talked-about capitalists were both resented and admired by frequenters of the tavern, a combining of emotions that generally lead to ill temper and barroom brawls. Branwell had written twice to Marie describing all this and lamenting the lack of palatable food a state of affairs that he knew would gain her sympathy. The day before, when he had made the trek to the station in order to post the letters, the station master told him that word had it that no one could determine, any more, where the road was situated. In the old days, the man added, you could identify a road in winter by the cut it made through the forest. "Forest is all gone now," he said, "and the stumps is all under the drifts."

Branwell had immediately laid down the last of his money in order to purchase a ticket home.

In Branwell's company now, and moving considerably faster than he was because of the snowshoes on his feet, was Ghost, who just that morning had announced that he would soon be stabling horses for a hotel situated on a sandy point near water. Branwell had done his best to discourage him, had made a prediction himself of no room, no board, no money, but Ghost was not to be put off. "One does not argue with destiny," he told his new friend, "for destiny always wins one way or another. I see horses again in my future. There were horses in my past as well, but since the railroad their numbers have diminished in these parts. I'm your man for horses."

Branwell, who was moderately alarmed, realized that it had been a mistake to tell Ghost that there was no railway in his County and therefore many horses. "You won't find any bears there," he said now, hoping to settle the matter. "There may be horses, but I've never seen a bear."

"No bears here either," Ghost said. "No forest, no bears...that's the way it is. Used to be bears, and there used to be horses, but it all went to h.e.l.l around here faster than you could say knife." He pulled from his pocket a train ticket that he claimed to have found late one night on the barroom floor and looked at it closely. "Only good until Toronto," he said. "After that I'll be in the baggage car. I'll meet you at the other end. Did I tell you I saw a woman in my future too? And I saw plenty of good food...interesting food, not just your ordinary grub."

Poor Marie, thought Branwell. She wasn't likely to be happy about this, though he did recall that the previous summer she had said that they needed someone to look after the state of the stables and the visitors' horses.

Annabelle was destined to witness her father's decline and fall, his body weakening, his mind beginning to shed parts of the past. As if he no longer had any use for them, he sometimes forgot that he had married and sired children, but more often he forgot that his wife was dead. Annabelle wondered if perhaps this was because her mother had been so indistinct, so listless, that absence seemed a permanent quality of her character even when she was alive. "Where is is that woman?" her father would ask. "Down with a migraine again?" When reminded of her death, he appeared to be surprised rather than shocked or grief-stricken. "Well, I'll be bogged!" he would exclaim. "Why on earth didn't anyone tell me?" On the rare occasions when he remembered Branwell at all, he forgot that his son was no longer in residence. "Out on the rafts, I suppose," he would say when Branwell's name came up. Or, more suspiciously, "Upstairs in bed with that Irish girl, I'll wager." that woman?" her father would ask. "Down with a migraine again?" When reminded of her death, he appeared to be surprised rather than shocked or grief-stricken. "Well, I'll be bogged!" he would exclaim. "Why on earth didn't anyone tell me?" On the rare occasions when he remembered Branwell at all, he forgot that his son was no longer in residence. "Out on the rafts, I suppose," he would say when Branwell's name came up. Or, more suspiciously, "Upstairs in bed with that Irish girl, I'll wager."

Her father also failed to recall that not one serviceable tree remained in the vicinity of the tributaries and rivers that flowed into the Great Lakes and that, in consequence, his business was all but defunct. At least once a week he would rise much earlier than Annabelle, don his suit coat and hat, and depart for the office. Sometimes she found him in the sail loft angrily insisting that the long-gone sail master show himself and account for the lack of sails. Sometimes she found him standing, small and confused, under the gorgeous cathedral ceiling of the huge, vacant shed in which parts of his s.h.i.+ps had once been constructed. It hurt Annabelle to tell her father, once again, that all the building and sailing and s.h.i.+pping was finished. "Finished? What do you mean finished?" he would demand. And when she told him there were no more trees, he turned away from her, shook his fist at the sky, and reminded G.o.d that he had tried to tell both Him and everyone else this would happen if those d.a.m.nable bogs were not drained. Her father's brain had grown confused, and she began to think that this confusion was not unlike the rapidly spreading moss on the sagging roof of his daily place of employment.

Annabelle began to feel that not only had the circ.u.mstances of the present changed utterly and irrevocably but that the facts of her own past were slipping away. When solidity and certainty began to slide away from her father, she herself was left feeling altered and disoriented. For the first time she realized that a very different Timber Island had existed before the Woodman empire had cluttered up its acreage and set sail from its sh.o.r.es. But, more disturbing, she could feel the indifferent future a future that would have nothing to do with her or her family stirring like a subtle tremor just below the surfaces of everything that until now had represented permanence.

One by one, the outbuildings on the island began to fall into disrepair. c.u.mmings had retired: there was little work for him to do in any case. The white paint on the clapboard was all but gone by the time he locked the door of the office for the last time and made his final journey toward the waterlogged pier, a journey that Annabelle watched, in some ways without regret, from her kitchen window. The empty smithy was next to show signs of succ.u.mbing to January's howling winds and an unusually heavy weight of snow, and at this point Annabelle saw that her father's arthritis had worsened, making it difficult for him to stand erect. When the huge, splendid building where the s.h.i.+ps had been born was blown down by a March gale, and the beams of its vaulted ceiling lay scattered like the bones of a huge extinct animal, Annabelle knew that her father's collapse would likely follow suit. And she was right. He took to his bed that May and after a few weeks of fever and delirium, he began to repeat the phrase devil's steams.h.i.+ps devil's steams.h.i.+ps over and over again. Then, one early morning, he clutched Annabelle's arm, told her that Gilderson would certainly attempt to steal the lake. Before she could ask him what he meant by this warning, he died. At the funeral only Maurice, her father's beloved Badger, wept openly, though his sorrow was to abate somewhat when he discovered that he was to inherit the lion's share of his grandfather's still sizable though admittedly diminished fortune. The remaining sum would go to Branwell and Marie and would be used for improvements to their hotel. Annabelle would become sole heir to the empty, changed world of the island: the deteriorating architecture, the dwindling resources, the broken s.h.i.+ps lying under the waters of Back Bay. over and over again. Then, one early morning, he clutched Annabelle's arm, told her that Gilderson would certainly attempt to steal the lake. Before she could ask him what he meant by this warning, he died. At the funeral only Maurice, her father's beloved Badger, wept openly, though his sorrow was to abate somewhat when he discovered that he was to inherit the lion's share of his grandfather's still sizable though admittedly diminished fortune. The remaining sum would go to Branwell and Marie and would be used for improvements to their hotel. Annabelle would become sole heir to the empty, changed world of the island: the deteriorating architecture, the dwindling resources, the broken s.h.i.+ps lying under the waters of Back Bay.

Three or four weeks after her father's death, on an afternoon in early June, Annabelle decided to take on the task of organizing and cleaning the sagging, and now structurally unsound, office. In contrast to the spa.r.s.e furnis.h.i.+ngs and generally stark appearance of this interior, the lacquered wooden shelves that lined the four walls of the large inner office were overflowing with a profusion of loose papers, ledger books, cardboard and wooden boxes, rolled maps tied with frayed cords, charts, and an a.s.sortment of small dusty wax models for what might or might not have become s.h.i.+ps' figureheads. There were several stacks of scribblers; each one, according to the labels carefully pasted on the cover, was an account of the journey of a raft down the river to Quebec. The first hundred or so of these logs were written in the hand of Annabelle's father, the rest in the hand of her brother.

This is all that remains, thought Annabelle, of the efforts of her father and those like him. She had no idea what to keep and what to throw away and though she had brought several burlap bags with her for trash, she had not as yet deposited a single object in any of them. Instead, she found herself removing great heaps of paper from the shelves, placing these in piles on the floor, moving them to no apparent end back and forth across the room while dust rose around her like smoke. It was while she was engaged in this random and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to organize her father's voluminous archive that she discovered twelve maps of the bogs.

They were drawn on parchment and were so old and stiff they were almost impossible to unroll. When, by securing their corners with heavy ledger books, Annabelle managed to prevent the maps from snapping back into tight scrolls, the varnish that had covered them cracked and lifted like a caramel glaze on one of Marie's delicious desserts. Each time she unfurled another bog Annabelle gasped with pleasure, for these were beautiful works of art. Executed in what must have been hundreds of shades of brown that bled at the edges of the bog in question into infinitely varied shades of green, and occasionally criss-crossed by the tiniest of blue lines, intended, she supposed, to represent streams, these territories were drafted with such exquisite care they could only have been made with love. The calligraphy that spelled out the remarkable names of the bogs, and those of the arable green areas called cooms that sometimes existed in the center of the bogs and the surrounding lakes and mountains, was also of the highest caliber. Coomaspeara, Coomavoher, Coomnahorna, Coomnakilla, Coomshana, and Knocknagantee, Knockmoyle, Knocknacusha, Knocklomena. Annabelle would remember always the shock and wonder she experienced when, at the bottom of each map, it was her father's signature that she found. Then a terrible sadness came over her. She realized that the artist in him was someone he had never permitted her to meet.

Annabelle walked to the east window and stared out at the vacant s.h.i.+pyard. She tried, without much success, to solve the puzzle that had been presented to her. How was it possible that her father could render the very landscape that had been the source of his humiliation with such meticulous affection? There was something wistful and tender about the maps, and Annabelle, strolling once again among them, began to understand that her father must have been bruised by experience or filled with longing at one time or another. None of this made any sense at all in the face of the tyrant he had been in his prime, or even the confused old man he had turned into later, and yet there was no denying that the younger man who had made these maps was one with vision and heart. The loss she felt in the face of this was more intense in that it was the loss of a gift she had never been given. She felt overcome with shame that she had not known all this before. She could not bring herself to remove the maps from the floor, to roll them back up, return them to the shelves. Before she left the office she sat slowly down on the hard chair behind her father's hard desk, put her face in her hands, and wept for the first time in years.

Summer after summer, beyond the bright windows of the Ballagh Oisin, the Great Lake roared or whispered against a sand beach on which visiting children made miniature towns, elaborate castles, or complicated drainage systems. c.u.mulus clouds bloomed like distant white forests far out over the lake, but never ventured inland to disturb the sunny afternoons. At night the constellations moved above the waves against a clear black background, and sometimes, in the very early mornings, or just before sunset, the water became entirely still as if intent on merging with the sky. Gulls rode the wind, ducks practised flight patterns for future migrations, and each year, on one spectacular July day, a flotilla of enormous arctic swans sailed regally past.

What a place it was! Perched on the very last finger of the arm of the peninsular County, the hotel was like a st.u.r.dy wooden s.h.i.+p that had come into port after a long journey, leaving fields and farmhouses and woodlots in its wake...almost as if it had created or had given birth to such things. The exterior of the building was painted bright white, as were the rocking chairs on the porch. Guests emerging from its doors wore white as well, the unspoken dress code of the place. Women in pastel skirts drifted down halls past Branwell's turquoise landscapes, eager to enter the piercing light of the long summer days.

The natural talents that Marie had first begun to show evidence of in Mackenzie's kitchen on the island had now blossomed to such an extent that her culinary accomplishments were acquiring a reputation. Her lemon meringue pies and decorated cakes, for instance, were famous as far away as Toronto and Montreal, and her sauces for fresh lake trout were discussed well into the winter. The guests gorged themselves three times a day in the pale blue dining room while the darker blue of the Great Lake swell heaved beyond the panes of a mult.i.tude of windows and the Tremble Point lighthouse shone on a sandbar islet offsh.o.r.e.

There were walks in the evenings along the sandy sh.o.r.e or inland though a wood of flickering poplar and birch, then into a meadow filled with daisies, black-eyed Susans, and the soft blue flowers called bachelor b.u.t.ton. Later, Ghost would be called in from the stables to dance and sing. (Marie, though fond of Ghost, was superst.i.tious, and insisted one had to go out out to the stables, in daylight, to have one's fortune told.) Even one or two of the guests could be persuaded to entertain: Mr. McIntyre, a bank manager from Grimsby, might sing a song, one of the young ladies might play the old piano (which could never be kept in tune because of the humidity), and inevitably someone would recite a poem by Mr. Tennyson. If this took place during the summer of 1889, just after the great poet had published "Crossing the Bar," one of the company would inevitably deliver the mournful lines and everyone's eyes would fill with tears. Everyone's eyes, that is, except for Annabelle's, if she happened to be in residence on her yearly visit. She considered the laureate to be a pretentious romantic and therefore she had always disliked his poetry. One June evening she announced to the guests, all of whom had removed their handkerchiefs during a shoe salesman's particularly sensitive recitation of "The Lady of Shallot," that, in her opinion, the girl in question was a simple-minded infant who had undoubtedly died of starvation rather than a broken heart since, beyond a brief reference to barley, there had been mention of neither food nor drink in the story, unless one took into account her name, which, if Annabelle remembered her French correctly, had something to do with onions. This had shocked the gathering so thoroughly that Branwell had found it necessary later in the evening to upbraid his sister in private concerning her frankness. to the stables, in daylight, to have one's fortune told.) Even one or two of the guests could be persuaded to entertain: Mr. McIntyre, a bank manager from Grimsby, might sing a song, one of the young ladies might play the old piano (which could never be kept in tune because of the humidity), and inevitably someone would recite a poem by Mr. Tennyson. If this took place during the summer of 1889, just after the great poet had published "Crossing the Bar," one of the company would inevitably deliver the mournful lines and everyone's eyes would fill with tears. Everyone's eyes, that is, except for Annabelle's, if she happened to be in residence on her yearly visit. She considered the laureate to be a pretentious romantic and therefore she had always disliked his poetry. One June evening she announced to the guests, all of whom had removed their handkerchiefs during a shoe salesman's particularly sensitive recitation of "The Lady of Shallot," that, in her opinion, the girl in question was a simple-minded infant who had undoubtedly died of starvation rather than a broken heart since, beyond a brief reference to barley, there had been mention of neither food nor drink in the story, unless one took into account her name, which, if Annabelle remembered her French correctly, had something to do with onions. This had shocked the gathering so thoroughly that Branwell had found it necessary later in the evening to upbraid his sister in private concerning her frankness.

"What can it possibly matter to you what Tennyson says or doesn't say about romance?" he asked. "Why would you care enough to state your case so vehemently?"

"Well, what would you have me say?" she reportedly replied. "That his 'Lady' made the right decision? She should have stuck to her loom, or, better still, she should have gone outdoors into the fresh air and got some exercise. Reaping barley with the other early reapers would have been a much wiser choice than dying for the likes of Lancelot." In truth, she thought that the line "only reapers, reaping early in among the bearded barley" was quite beautiful, but she was far too stubborn to admit this.

She wondered, suddenly, how her brother saw her at this moment. As an aging, ill-tempered spinster, undoubtedly, an eccentric maiden aunt. Allowing such a thought to form in her mind increased her irritation in any number of ways. She decided she would spend the following day away from the Ballagh Oisin and asked Branwell to hire a carriage and driver for her so that she could make a tour of the County. She traveled along sh.o.r.e roads near bays and inlets filled with fis.h.i.+ng boats, moved slowly down the main streets of several towns where hardware and grocery stores were doing a brisk business, and pa.s.sed by cultivated fields that would soon be ripe with the barley that was rapidly becoming the staple crop of the region. All this evidence of industry and practicality soothed her wounded spirits somewhat, though she couldn't say just why, and she returned to the hotel at twilight in much better humor.

A few days later, while helping Marie roll pastry dough in the kitchen, Annabelle glanced out the window and was the first to spot the arrival of her nephew at the end of the leafy lane that led to the hotel. The arrival itself was not unexpected; he often spent some of the summer there with his parents, though, by this time, he had little in common with them and was mildly embarra.s.sed by their station in life, which, to his mind, was entirely defined by their position as innkeepers. What was was surprising was the letter that preceded him, a letter in which he had stated his intention to stay for a considerable length of time long enough to oversee the completion of a house nearby. Maurice, it would seem, had decided to become a gentleman farmer. Neither his parents nor Annabelle could quite fathom this; Maurice, to their knowledge, had shown not the slightest interest in the natural world. In fact, Maurice had shown interest in next to nothing beyond his employment as a.s.sistant manager of the Bank of Commerce in Kingston. Added to this was a further surprise. Seated beside him in the approaching buggy was a fair-haired woman. Annabelle, who was standing by the kitchen window watching the couple disembark from the buggy, knew by the woman's unmistakably commanding gestures, and by her nephew's obvious attention to those gestures, that this woman had the devil in her as big as a woodchuck. There is going to be trouble here, she thought. She considered returning to Timber Island in order to avoid the drama she sensed was about to take place, but her curiosity got the better of her. surprising was the letter that preceded him, a letter in which he had stated his intention to stay for a considerable length of time long enough to oversee the completion of a house nearby. Maurice, it would seem, had decided to become a gentleman farmer. Neither his parents nor Annabelle could quite fathom this; Maurice, to their knowledge, had shown not the slightest interest in the natural world. In fact, Maurice had shown interest in next to nothing beyond his employment as a.s.sistant manager of the Bank of Commerce in Kingston. Added to this was a further surprise. Seated beside him in the approaching buggy was a fair-haired woman. Annabelle, who was standing by the kitchen window watching the couple disembark from the buggy, knew by the woman's unmistakably commanding gestures, and by her nephew's obvious attention to those gestures, that this woman had the devil in her as big as a woodchuck. There is going to be trouble here, she thought. She considered returning to Timber Island in order to avoid the drama she sensed was about to take place, but her curiosity got the better of her.

It wasn't long before she came to know that the trouble she had intuited was not to be of a short duration, for the Badger, as it turned out, had married it. "My name is Caroline Woodman," the young woman announced as she entered the hall and began removing the pins from her hat. "Maurice and I are married." Maurice, who was at that very moment struggling with hatboxes and suitcases, and a variety of a.s.sorted pieces of feminine luggage, looked uncharacteristically sheepish at the mention of his marriage, but said nothing. "He would have written to you," the woman called Caroline continued, "but I thought he should tell you in person. After all, I had to tell my papa in person and that was not an easy thing to do, I can a.s.sure you." Having delivered this piece of information, the young woman swept past the small a.s.sembly, entered the sitting room, and collapsed on one of the chairs, throwing her feathered hat onto one of the sidetables as she did so.

Annabelle followed the girl into the sitting room in order to observe her more closely. The eyes, she decided, were too small and too close together. There were too many freckles on her otherwise milk-white skin and, by the look of her, she might fatten as she grew older. These were the only physical deformities that Annabelle could find on the person of Maurice's bride, but they would have to do for now.

"Maurice," the young woman called in the direction of the hall where her husband and his parents were still standing as if frozen to the floorboards, "come in here and introduce me to this elderly lady. Is she a relation of yours? And who were all those people on the porch?"

Maurice walked into the room and sat down by Caroline's side. "She is my Aunt Annabelle," he said. "But," he added, vaguely embarra.s.sed, "those people we pa.s.sed on the veranda, those people are the summer patrons." He seemed to have forgotten altogether about his parents, who were now standing quietly in the doorway. "I am Maurice's father," Branwell offered. He put his arm around Marie. "And this is his mother."

"I'm not elderly," said Annabelle, glancing at Marie. "Not quite yet."

"Was it a Catholic ceremony?" Marie asked her son.

Caroline began to laugh. She put her hand on Maurice's arm. "The state father was in...can you imagine what he would have said had we been married by a papist?"

"We were married secretly," Branwell said, "by the first minister we could find. A Presbyterian, I think."

"Lutheran," Caroline corrected. "A German. Papa wasn't too happy about that either. He's always said that he runs a good Methodist business in a good Methodist town, and that all his s.h.i.+ps are good Methodist s.h.i.+ps manned by good Methodist men."

Marie, much to Annabelle's astonishment, had brightened somewhat. "You're not really married then," she said to her son, "if there was no priest." She turned to Caroline. "If your father doesn't approve, you could tell him that because Maurice was baptized a Catholic, you're not really married. He might be pleased to hear that."

Maurice continued to gaze at his bride. "No," he said, "we are most certainly husband and wife. And, anyway, Mister Gilderson cheered up a bit once we began to talk about the barley."

"Gilderson?" said Annabelle. "Can you possibly mean Oran Gilderson?"

Maurice nodded.

"Of course," said Caroline. "I don't believe there is another Gilderson in the vicinity."

It took Annabelle a moment to digest this information. Oran Gilderson had been writing letters to her of late, letters in which he had offered to be of a.s.sistance with the salvage operations of what remained of the Woodman empire. Annabelle, remembering her father's distrust of his primary compet.i.tor, had grave suspicions about these missives. What exactly had this gentleman in mind for the diminished business toward which she had developed a surprising protectiveness. Thank G.o.d Father is dead, she thought, recalling his last words. She was about to say something but changed her mind. "What's all this about barley?" she asked instead.

The land that Maurice had purchased with his grandfather's money comprised one hundred acres, the narrowest, eastern-most parameters of which touched the grounds of his parents' hotel just at the spot where the gra.s.s tennis court ended and the poplar woods began. The western edge joined a further hundred acres acres that were under cultivation and that had been given to him, reluctantly to be sure, by his new father-in-law. Their house would be built on the far side of the woods and was to be, as his bride explained, made of brick and very modern. A great many bay windows and round towers and oddly shaped windows were to be seen in the plans Maurice pulled from a suitcase and unrolled at their feet. The meadow was to be ploughed and the poplar woods cut down.

"Why would you want to do that?" Annabelle was genuinely incredulous.

"Barley," Caroline said before Maurice had a chance to respond. She went on to explain that there were already ten acres of barley on the property, but they wanted more.

"That's all very well," said Branwell to his son, "but what will you have to look at if you are surrounded by nothing but fields of barley?"

"Look at?" asked Caroline. "Why should we need something to look at? We'll have a view of the lake, after all, and even barley can be quite lovely when the crop is high."

Annabelle noted that the young woman had stiffened in her chair. She had the defensive air of one who was vaguely frightened by the company and was a.s.serting herself as a result. Her eyelashes, Annabelle noted, were almost as thick as Marie's but of a lighter hue, offsetting, quite beautifully, the blue of her eyes and the gold of her hair. Annabelle could see that the young woman was very attractive, but would not have called her pretty. There was something significant missing, and suddenly Annabelle knew what it was. Caroline gave off no light. She did not glow. Rather, in the manner of a coal fire, she smoldered and seemed, somehow, to be just on the edge of emitting a poisonous, though odorless, gas.

"Barley," said Maurice, "is very profitable. It is right now selling to the Americans at eighty cents a bushel and "

"Eighty cents a bushel," interjected young Caroline eagerly, "and bound to go higher and higher. The Americans have a great thirst for beer and other spirits. They simply can't get enough barley."

"I fear," said Annabelle, who was once again wondering about Oran Gilderson's business plans, "that reapers, 'reaping early in among the bearded barley' are more likely to reap profits than those who appear later in the day." All of this, she thought, might very well be interpreted as the beginnings of the robbery of the lake.

Caroline looked confused.

"Tennyson," said Annabelle.

"We shall become very rich, Aunt," said Maurice. "You'll see."

Now it was Maurice who became the focus of Annabelle and Marie's ongoing inquiry into the bewildering nature of the male psyche. When they were once again alone together in the kitchen, the subject of Badger and what he had been thinking when he decided to marry this spoiled young woman was instantly raised. Although Annabelle had become aware early on that, because he was a son, not a husband or lover, Maurice's character was one that should be discussed with great delicacy, this seemed not to matter in the present circ.u.mstances. Normally, when Marie praised the boy, it was best that one nod in agreement. When she complained about her son's faults and weaknesses, it was best to disagree, the more vehemently the better. But now, when Marie angrily suggested that the catastrophe had occurred because Maurice was quite simply trying to improve his standing in life, was, in fact, like the girl or loathe her, marrying money, or "marrying up" as she put it, Annabelle agreed that, indeed, cold ambition had likely played a large part. "But, there is something else," she said. "He seems stunned, entranced. I suspect he is actually in love with her."

Marie looked horrified. "Sacre Dieu," she said, crossing herself and turning toward the wall.

"And as for ambition," Annabelle continued, "it will be Caroline's ambition that will rule the day, not that of poor Maurice, her besotted husband."

"He should run like a deer," said Marie.

"Where would he run to? Back to the bank? I've heard a lot about this man Gilderson. He would likely have him shot. And, as I said before, Marie, Maurice is smitten. He's a goner. From now on his life will be all bricks and barley."

What neither woman said, but both knew, was that come early autumn just before the harvest of the last crop of barley, the entire peninsula would be transformed into various shades of yellow: the poplars, the maples, and the field after field after field of barley, bordered near the water by the paler yellow banner of the sand. Moving through this landscape they had likely felt surrounded by radiance at one time or another: golden September sun, golden apples in the orchards (which were becoming scarce now because of the spread of barley,) golden clouds of sunset coming earlier and earlier to the sky, gla.s.ses filled with the dark gold of whiskey in the evenings, or the bright gold of beer in the late afternoon. Sometimes in August, before the harvest, the fields of barley would turn a peculiar shade of lavender at twilight, mysterious, unfathomable, the deep purple shadows of the maples that edged the fencelines like pools or clouds. The prosperity of the previous decade had been both directly and indirectly connected to the increasing production of this crop, a fact that would, in the future, cause the whole epoch to be referred to by citizens of the County as the Barley Days.

These Barley Days might just as well have been called the Brick Days, for central to the years when barley was making people rich was the building of larger and larger brick houses, houses much like the one that rose with alarming swiftness a quarter of a mile from the clapboard hotel. During the early stages of its construction, when the frame of the nuptial home was being erected, the noise of the carpenters' hammers disturbed the guests, as later did the sound of poplars and birches cras.h.i.+ng to the ground. By the time the bricklayers arrived the half-finished skeleton of the house was clearly visible from the upper veranda.

Teams of oxen removed the ruined trunks and roots of trees and, not much later, a steam-powered tractor churned up the earth. Hedgerows that had existed between previously smaller fields were removed. Barley crops were planted. The monstrous brick walls of the new house sprang up as if by magic overnight. What appeared to be a half a mile of gingerbread fretsaw work arrived at the beginning of July, along with big iron pipes for the plumbing, a boiler for central heating, six elaborate mantelpieces, and two claw-footed bathtubs, painted gold. By the end of July, Maurice and Caroline were installed in their new home, the huge shadow of which, at twilight, seemed almost to reach the steps of the Ballagh Oisin.

The young couple's departure from the hotel was met with general relief. There had been several monumental disagreements during their stay there the furnis.h.i.+ngs of the interior were not, apparently, up to Caroline's standards. Complaints concerning was.h.i.+ng with a pitcher and a bowl could be heard some mornings when pa.s.sing by the door of the couple's room, and the lack of a private bathtub was a subject that was often raised. When the windows for the new house were delivered and proved to be pointed not curved, Caroline reacted with angry tears, blaming her husband, his parents, even a couple of guests for the mishap.

There were two or three uncomfortable visits from Mister Gilderson himself, who had managed to outlive his third wife (mother of Caroline) by seven years, despite the fact that his frame was twisted by the arthritis that, he claimed, was made much worse by the presence of lighthouses like the one at the end of the small island just off the end of sandy Tremble Point. Lighthouses, he insisted, lured his s.h.i.+ps into the path of destruction while, at the same time, they interrupted the currents of fresh air that he believed bought relief to his arthritis. "And," he once announced, s.h.i.+fting his limbs on the velvet chair that had been offered him, "they accelerate my gout."

"Poor Papa," said Caroline.

The other thing that Mister Gilderson despised was discovered when, in attempting to dispel the tense silence that followed, Maurice described a spectacular storm in which he had been caught the previous winter. Gilderson had no tolerance for any story relating to weather in general, and snow in particular. "Do we really have to listen to one more tale concerning blizzards, squalls, drifts, ice, or falling barometers?" the older man said with irritation. "I will not hear of any reference to carriages abandoned by the side of roadways or s.h.i.+ps being frozen in harbor. And, please refrain from any mention of November." Weather was, to Gilderson's mind, the enemy of business. Like a relative who had caused him embarra.s.sment, he did not wish its name to be spoken and wanted its picture turned to the wall. Annabelle knew that November was the month when, for reasons of safety, all s.h.i.+ps, except Gilderson's steams.h.i.+ps, went into retirement until the spring breakup. Several tragedies had occurred during this month, tragedies that, according to her father, Gilderson had measured purely in terms of loss of cargo and vessels with no apparent thought for the attendant loss of life. She looked at him with amused disapproval, then said, wickedly, "I quite like November. Things settle down and become quiet on the island then. Not so much coming and going. You can turn your mind to other things...reading, art."

Oran Gilderson, who had ignored her until this moment, turned in Annabelle's direction, as if trying to determine just who she was. When, after a moment or two of concentration, recognition dawned, he smiled, nodded his head in a conciliatory fas.h.i.+on, and said, "Indeed, yes, reading and art, wonderful pastimes for a woman. But I, madam, am a man of business."

Before she began the journey back to Timber Island, Annabelle took her nephew aside to offer a warning. "Weather isn't the only culprit," she told him. "Greed can be an enemy of business as well. Remember that."

During the next two or three years it would happen that Maurice would prosper to such an extent that not only were his own parents impressed by his successes but he almost won the favor of his father-in law. Barley rose to a dollar a bushel, and more and more of Gilderson's s.h.i.+ps sailed back and forth across the lake carrying the golden cargo to the American market. Caroline added a conservatory to the house and a trellised gazebo to the yard. In the course of one year she bought no fewer than twenty hats, each piece of headgear more flamboyant than the one that had preceded it. When she became pregnant, one of the larger bedrooms was turned into an elaborate nursery, and soon that nursery contained a squalling baby boy who would eventually become my father and whom Maurice decided to call Thomas Jefferson Woodman in deference to the Americans whose thirst was making them so rich. Some of these Americans patronized the Ballagh Oisin, but these were Americans with modest incomes, usually of Irish descent, attracted to the hotel by its Gaelic moniker and its views of a lake that reminded them of the sea.

Even Annabelle had to admit that things were going well. The spoiled Caroline had taken, with surprising enthusiasm, to motherhood. Maurice had been sensible enough to hire men knowledgeable in the ways of farming operations while he was kept busy by the very gratifying pastime of keeping the books and investing the returns. Branwell painted all winter and amused and saw to his guests all summer. Everyone doted on the child, whom they called T.J. for short, and when this child began to use language, Marie revived her stories, bringing into the occasional evening the wolf, her slaughtered parents, her own trip to Orphan Island, the epidemics that swept through that inst.i.tution, small white coffins arriving on a dark brown sleigh, the delivery of stone angels, and a number of other wonderfully terrifying circ.u.mstances that might occur on the road from childhood to adolescence.

There weren't many clients any more the timber business being what it was. Annabelle mostly busied herself with annotating her splinter book, with painting, and, when the season permitted, she worked on what was becoming an impressive series of flower gardens near the house. Still, over the course of the next few years, she returned to her father's office every now and then to record transactions concerning the salvage enterprise in one of his ledger books, an enterprise that had, in recent months, begun to pick up somewhat. When she was in the office she still sometimes made half-hearted, unsuccessful attempts to sort out everything her father had left behind. She had not been able to force herself to roll up the maps of the bogs, however, and they had become such a permanent though dusty feature of the place she began to look on them as a sort of parchment carpet. On one afternoon in August, she had brought a good-sized feather duster with her so that she could clean up a bit. Perhaps, she mused as she worked, this is how entire civilizations become buried. Dust that is not removed might, over the course of time, acc.u.mulate to such an extent that eventually all architecture would be buried: columns and amphitheatres, temples and palaces. Sooner or later everything would succ.u.mb. If, in a thousand years, an archaeologist visited Timber Island, what would be left for him to dig up? Not much, she decided, a few stones from the foundation of the big house and bricks from the chimney, an anvil from the smithy, perhaps. By the time the word anvil anvil entered her mind Annabelle had stopped dusting and was looking out the west window toward the quay. Various sails and funnels were in view and among them she was surprised to see the sail of Branwell's small boat, which was approaching her docks. She was glad to know he was on his way to the island: he hadn't visited in months, and she, having resolved to pay more attention to salvage operations that had been left in her care, had several times postponed her planned visit to the hotel. entered her mind Annabelle had stopped dusting and was looking out the west window toward the quay. Various sails and funnels were in view and among them she was surprised to see the sail of Branwell's small boat, which was approaching her docks. She was glad to know he was on his way to the island: he hadn't visited in months, and she, having resolved to pay more attention to salvage operations that had been left in her care, had several times postponed her planned visit to the hotel.

When she saw him alight at the quay, she stepped outside and called his name. Shortly thereafter her brother was standing quite still in the open doorway of the inner office, stunned by the sight of the maps all over the floor.

"Maps of the bogs," Annabelle explained, not waiting for the question. She picked up the duster, bent over Gortatlea Bog, and brushed the dust from the beautiful colors.

"The villainous Irish bogs."

"The very ones."

Branwell began to weave around the topography in the direction of his sister. "He kept these maps." He studied each map for several minutes and then, as if exhausted by the information they imparted, he collapsed in c.u.mmings's chair, which Annabelle had brought from the outer office after her father's death. Remembering her own visits to her father's inner sanctum, the coldness of the surroundings and the coldness of the welcome, she wanted any visitors who came her way to at least be able to sit down. As an older woman, and, though she wouldn't have admitted this, a lonely one, she wasn't adverse to a bit of conversation.

She asked her brother to stay for an evening meal, and offered him a room for the night. Then she began to speak about the maps. "Look at this," she said, pointing again to the map of Gortatlea Bog. "Or this." Her toe touched the center of Glorah. "He loved all of this. It's obvious. Why did he want to destroy something he thought so beautiful?"

"People do what they have to," her brother said quietly, "and sometimes things are destroyed in the process." He began to pull on his right ear. "Poor Father," he said. "He likely didn't even know that he loved looking at landscape, figured it was only useful if you could exploit it in some way or another."

Annabelle wondered if in fact persistence was part of the explanation she was looking for. Was it the knowledge of something you have loved continuing to exist after you have left it behind that had caused such fury in her father? Branwell was still pulling on his ear and looking out the window. Annabelle could see that though the revelation of the maps had moved him, he was nevertheless preoccupied by something else. "What is it?" she asked finally. "What's on your mind?"

"Worry."

Annabelle waited. Then, when nothing further came from her brother's lips, she asked him what it was that concerned him. "Sand," he replied. "Maurice's foreman has told me that the soil is changing. He says it's turning into sand."

"But that is nonsense," said Annabelle. "Soil doesn't just spontaneously turn into sand."

"Yet it seems to be so. Caroline is in a state because her flowerbeds are beginning to be filled with sand and her lawns are not growing properly. There is a different kind of tough gra.s.s coming up and it is spa.r.s.e, with a lot of sand showing through." He sighed and looked at his hands, which were clenched in his lap. "And that's nothing compared to the sand around the hotel," he said. "There are dunes gathering beside the porch."

Annabelle tried to call up this image of the porch, but could picture only white rocking chairs, swept steps, tidy lawns.

"Well," she said, "perhaps that's only natural that this should happen. Tremble Point is situated on the sandy end of the County, after all. Maybe by next year things will have returned to "

"You have no idea," Branwell interrupted, "what this is doing to Marie. There is sand some mornings in the corners of the guest rooms. Sometimes it gets into the bread she bakes or, worse, into her sauces. Almost always it is sprinkled on the top of her lemon meringue pies. It is bothering the guests. Some are leaving early. And Marie... it's as if she is carrying the weight of this somewhere near her heart. She doesn't really complain, but I can see it in her face, I can see it in her eyes."

"Marie does not complain? About something this serious?" Annabelle recalled the fearless, outspoken little girl from orphanage, the strong young woman Marie had become. "Something is terribly wrong, then, and she is remaining silent so as not to make things worse."