macCLOUD FALLS, page 8
‘So here we are. Siwash Rock,’ she said, when he caught her up again. She had dismounted, taken her helmet off and her dark hair blew gently across her face as the sea wind swept up the narrow approach to Vancouver’s inner harbour. ‘Remember the story?’
‘Sure,’ he said. In fact, he had written about the Four Men. His mind envisaged a breed of northern giants, like Norse gods, but native to these shores, these gigantic landscapes of mountain, forest and fjord, and these men of the north seemed to follow him, as he cycled after her rear wheel, along the coastal track, then up a sharp brae.
He found the climb hard going, and she had to wait for him. Seeing him pant, she suggested a stop, so they ate hot-dogs from a stand, on a bench overlooking the sands where day-trippers frolicked.
‘I was trying to picture Captain Vancouver sailing up here, back in, what was it, the 1790s, seeing that rock. Giving places their English names,’ he said.
‘The names of his officers – Burrard, Bowen. I can’t recall them all.’ She took a bite from her hot-dog. ‘These are quite good,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t normally eat them.’
‘But as you’re a tourist guide for the day?’ She shrugged and smiled, then took another bite. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘The thing that strikes me now is how the native natural world is all still here, mixed in with the new – with the city, with that funny little statue of the mermaid you pointed out, with that massive bridge. But the stories you’ve told me, about Siwash and the all that, people know them, they’re still told?’
‘Not so much.’ She put her head on one side, considering. ‘And all the names are wrong. You know, the biggest of the misnomers are those!’
She waved at the grand mountains across the water. ‘They’re called the Lions, recumbent like Trafalgar Square supposedly. But in the local story they are sisters who married the enemies of their father so that there could be peace between them, after a long and bloody war. They insisted on it. So those are really The Sisters, symbols of peace, not king carnivores.’
‘So it is all still here,’ he said again, gazing around him, chewing his hot-dog. ‘That history.’
‘Not all, but yes, still here. Your Scots-built-Canada theory is not so strong in that light.’
He wasn’t sure how they had reached agreement, or even what the exact point of debate was, but it seemed they had, as she dumped the last bite of hot-dog, got back on her bike and beckoned him to follow, saying over her shoulder, ‘The surprise is this way.’
Up again they went, into the woods and he followed her wheel carefully across the rough track till it joined tarmac and arrived at the entrance to a scenically situated restaurant.
‘One of the most expensive in Vancouver,’ she said, as they watched a large black Mercedes drop a party outside.
‘I’m not sure I’m dressed for it,’ he answered. ‘And didn’t we just eat?’
‘Don’t be silly. We’re not here for that. This way.’
She pushed her bike a little off the path, and under the leafy frock of a great pine tree, crossed the brown-needled floor to a large stone. On a branch above, someone had left a little votive offering in the form of a canvas bag tied up with blue ribbon. Inside the bag were the remains of burned stalks.
‘Sagebrush,’ she said. ‘Sacred.’ He sniffed the air, the scent comingling with the sappy aroma from the conifer grove. She edged around the rock and emerged again in the light, to the side of the restaurant. Now he could see that it was a large statue, a memorial rough-hewn so that the stone appeared to contain the form, not constitute it. Close up, it appeared like some mountainous cluster of bluffs and cliffs, yet echoed a human form – on what might have been the mountain’s head was lightly carved the relief profile of a woman in what was once called ‘Indian costume.’ It was a strong face, slightly scarred by some eruption in the stone. On what might have been the mountain’s knee was carved:
E Pauline Johnson 1861-1913
And to the side:
ERECTED IN 1922
BY THE WOMEN’S CANADIAN CLUB
OF VANCOUVER B.C.
‘Ah, Pauline Johnson,’ he said. ‘My kinswoman.’
‘Oh my god, I hadn’t thought of that. You’re both Johnsons.’
‘Wasn’t she called ‘double-life’ or something?’
‘I’m impressed you’ve heard of her. Yes, she called herself Tekahionwake. That was her stage-name.’
‘In the second hand book trade, you come across everything at some time if you’re in business long enough – if you’re good, you scan and sample, retain the details. Often you don’t read too much of anything, as that slows you down, unless it’s really good, or something you’re researching. I’ve sold her book ‘The White Wampum’. A 1st edition, published London, 1903. Good price. But I haven’t really read her. I didn’t associate her with Vancouver, though,’ he went on. ‘I thought she lived in the east?’
‘She was from the east, Mohawk, but she retired here when she gave up the stage. She died a few years later, but in those last years here she published a series of what were like dialogues between herself and her tillicum, a local chief called Old Joe Capilano, where he told her the First Nations’ stories about this part of the world.’
‘So she translated these into English?’
‘It’s more than that. They’re really charming. You’d have to read them. Anyhow, after she died her friends collected them up and published them in a book called ‘Legends of Vancouver’. It’s a classic here.’
‘You seem to know a lot about her?’
She smiled, then looked down, and her dark hair fell about her face. ‘Well, for me it’s personal. Our first Canadian Christmas, after we emigrated, my mother gave me an old copy, from 1920. She said she hoped it would help me learn English, and that I wouldn’t feel so homesick if I knew some of the stories of our new home. Because stories make a place meaningful.’ She stopped, as if her mother’s presence suddenly materialised in her mind. ‘I don’t think she ever read it herself,’ she went on. ‘Her English wasn’t very good then. Still isn’t. So anyhow, the stories I told you – badly – are in a way, both hers and Pauline Johnson’s to me. Or rather, her tillicum’s.’
He circled the statue, taking photos. It seemed rather overgrown, as if the trees had surrounded her, drawn her back into the world of nature she’d come from.
‘Must have been very strange for you, emigrating – and quite hard to adjust?’
‘For sure – no carp in the bath for one thing.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It’s a Czech thing at Christmas. Carp.’ She laughed, but he could tell from the way she crossed her arms and turned slightly away that this wasn’t something to pursue, at least not now.
‘What’s a tillicum, by the way?’ he asked, instead.
‘It’s Chinook, you know, the trade lingo they developed here. Means friend.’
He smiled. ‘Nice word. So are we now each other’s tillicum?’
‘I think we are, yes,’ she said, nodding in that distinctive way he’d noted, as something quite definite she did on the moment of decision, having considered and affirmed. ‘More than that, actually. Radiation twins.’
And then, out of the woods, a figure appeared, walking slowly towards them. At first glance, she might have been some sort of spirit, dressed in grey with long white hair braided to her waist, a holy woman. She moved towards them quickly, but barely seeming to step. She halted at the canvas bag of sagebrush.
‘Seven years, and I didn’t know she was here,’ the woman said as if addressing them, though her eyes were unfocused, dark and wide. Then she seemed to drift on, away again into the trees.
‘Who or what was that?’ he said, as the spectre departed.
‘A woman who knows what Tekahionwake means,’ was Martina’s reply.
‘Was she real?’
‘Worlds are overlapping,’ she said. He wondered what she meant, but she didn’t elaborate.
They rode back to the park entrance through the Lost Lagoon, a weaving path by great reeds, and bird-life everywhere – ducks and other water fowl he didn’t recognize, some like herons he did. He’d got used to the bike, to cycling, it felt the most natural thing to be doing, here with her, this woman he’d met. He pulled alongside her where the path was clear.
‘Say those lines again?’ he asked. ‘Tekahionwake.’
“O the Lure of the Lost Lagoon?’ That verse?’ She composed herself, spoke slowly as they cycled: ‘I dream tonight that my paddle blurs, the purple shade where the seaweed stirs, I hear the call of the singing firs,” she recited, then prompted him with a look.
‘In the hush of the golden moon?’ he finished.
She nodded, ‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘You have been paying attention.’
As they left the bike shop, he almost stepped out into traffic at the pedestrian crossing, but she pulled him back by the arm just in time.
‘My god,’ she said, ‘Be more careful. I swear you have a death wish.’
‘I guess I do,’ he laughed. ‘Or did. Since the cancer. But don’t we all, subconsciously? Isn’t that what old Freud thought?
And then the walk sign lit.
She took him to Joe Fortes, part of his tour, she said. It was a Vancouver institution, this restaurant, named after one of the early city characters, a black lifeguard who had patrolled the beach at Kits for decades. Her mood had soured again and he wondered if she was processing the end of her affair. But after a few sips of wine, she brightened a little. He told her what he’d done during her time out of town and she seemed interested. That helped to focus his mind on the next adventure. In the morning he’d be on a Greyhound, heading into the canyon, to Lyle country and Cloud Falls. The prospect excited him. He’d studied the place from afar, knew quite a bit already of its history, and he was keen to see it in reality. But the idea that this was their last day in Vancouver together didn’t please him, and he told her that.
‘We’ll see each other again,’ she said. ‘We’re radiation twins. Maybe on your way back? Anyway, doesn’t pay to look too far ahead. Let’s go for a walk after this. Hero’s been waiting patiently at home since morning.’
She parked outside her apartment block and went inside while he waited, to re-emerge with an eager Hero pulling on the leash. This time she drove to Jericho Beach and they walked through the park down toward the shore, but she led him away from the beach to a hidden meadow where lupins and sweet peas and purple vetch grew in great quantity. It was almost a little bit of Britain and he surmised what had been there in the past, if it was an early settler’s garden run wild, pioneers bringing seeds from home to plant in the colony. But he sensed she was far away in her thoughts. They did not walk side by side, in step. She seemed to want to stay a pace or two ahead or behind, fussing over her dog.
They circled round through the park, past a little lake where she said she had once seen a beaver, but there was no sign of the famous rodent, once the prize of trappers right across the land, and hunted almost to extinction. He remembered Grey Owl, the Englishman who had pretended to be a native, and who championed the protection of the beaver in his hugely successful books until he was exposed as a man from Bristol, and they spoke of him for a while. She hadn’t read his books, but knew of him through a recent film.
Across the water, the great freighters lay at anchor as before, but a different lot, in different places. The mist still hung over the mountains and for some reason he was filled with gloom, thinking this was possibly the last time he’d walk here with her. He could see Bowen Island to the west, and wondered what thoughts that sight spurred in her mind. Maybe he was sensing her mood?
At a bench, strategically placed to occupy the perfect viewpoint, he noticed the little plaque read ‘Goodnight Irene – I’ll see you in my dreams’.
‘That was a favourite song of my mother’s,’ he told her, suddenly transported back to Edinburgh, to the old phonograph and the dusty 78 records his mother and father had collected. The version they had was by The Weavers, though he knew now it was Leadbelly’s signature tune.
‘What song?’ she asked, distractedly.
So he explained, and sang it, at least the parts he could remember. The chorus and the verse that went ‘Sometimes I live in the city, sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I take a great notion, to jump in the river and drown.’
She looked at him intensely, those golden brown eyes piercing. ‘You and your death wish,’ she said, quite angrily. ‘I’ve heard enough of that. Aren’t you grateful to be alive still, after what you’ve been through?’ She walked on with Hero, staring into the distance, until they reached her car again. When she dropped him off outside his lodging, she said, ‘If you’d like a lift to the station tomorrow, I’ll be happy to oblige.’
He thanked her, strangely elated at the thought he’d see her again in the morning, even if it was only for a few minutes. He gave Hero a furry hug, and turned to her. She smiled ruefully and kissed him on the cheek.
Ruefully, she thought? Who uses a word like that these days? His writing was annoying her now, it was prying and personal. She almost felt like disposing of it. What right had he to be using her in this way, making a fiction out of her life?
She heard the rumble of a truck outside, put the journal back where she’d found it, and went to the room door. Hero leapt up and joined her.
The little bell on the latch door downstairs rang, and she heard a commotion, George, his sons and waiting family, Rick’s voice, everyone talking at once. She checked the room behind her, pulled the bed clothes straight, lifted her handbag and went downstairs with Hero, then stopped on the mezzanine landing, to see what was going on. She caught a glimpse of Big George and his son trying to fit through the front doorway while helping Gil to walk, his arms round their shoulders.
George was saying, ‘Easy now, easy fella,’ while Rick called out, ‘Set him down here.’ George said, ‘Seems like he’s twisted his knee. Plus he’s been out in the sun a mite too long. Maybe got a touch of heat fever.’
‘Where did you find him?’ George’s wife asked.
‘On the trail in like we thought. He says he found the cabin and was on his way back when he fell. But I don’t think he could have…’
‘Mr Johnson? Bert?’ Rick said. ‘You okay?’
The figure now slumped in the chair Rick had brought nodded slowly.
‘Can I get you anything? Whiskey?’
Again the figure nodded.
‘There’s a friend of yours here. Come all the way up from Vancouver cos she was worryin,’ George’s wife’s sister chimed in.
The Scotsman spoke for the first time. ‘A friend?’
‘Martina,’ Rick said. ‘At least I think that’s her name.’
One of the kids started giggling. ‘She’s the lady outta Alien really.’
‘Sshh now, don’t confuse him. He’s in a bad way,’ George said. ‘Where is she anyways?’
‘Here I am,’ came a voice from stairway. The tall brunette woman in purple stepped slowly down, with the grace of Sigourney Weaver. Her collie followed obediently, stopped when she did. The Scotsman, his face red and bloated, tried to see who it was.
‘What are you doing here?’ he breathed.
‘I came to rescue you from yourself,’ she said. ‘And so you’re still alive, I’m glad to see.’
Gil looked anything but aware - like she might as well have been a hallucination brought on by the heat – and his exposed skin was painfully burned. After the whiskey Rick brought made him feel like throwing up, the assembly decided he needed immediate rest, so George and his sons carried him upstairs to room 14, where they laid him out on his bed. They pulled up his shorts so they could see the knee. It was certainly swollen. And the exposed parts of his skin, his fore arms and thighs, were lobster red. At least he’d been wearing a wide-brimmed Western hat to save his head and neck.
‘I’ll think I’d better go get some cream for those arms,’ Rick said.
‘There’s some here,’ George noticed. He picked up a bottle of Avon sun-cream from the bedside table, squirted a lump on his huge palm and began to gently massage his arms. Johnson recoiled in pain and the shock brought him to himself again. ‘Where did she go?’ he said, looking around, slurring his words. ‘Is she really here?’
She was outside in the darkness with Hero, walking along the railroad under an arc-light, while the dog sniffed about among the tumbleweed. She was singing, softly, ‘Irene, goodnight, goodnight Irene,’ to nobody. Then she turned on her heel, called Hero to follow, and went back inside the oldest inn in BC.
Upstairs she went, towards room 14, from where the groans of the Scotsman emanated. She stopped in the doorway. Big George had given over masseuse duties to his wife.
‘That’s no good,’ she said. ‘He needs to be in a cold bath.’ They all looked up at the tall figure in the doorway, her dog’s face poking in beside her legs. ‘Have you got oatmeal, Rick?’ she added.
‘Oatmeal?’ the innkeeper asked, surprised. ‘Sure. Why?’
‘You put two large cups of oatmeal into a cold bath, give it a good stir, and put him in it. My grandma told me.’
‘Oatmeal?’ came the pained voice from the bed. ‘You’re going to put me in a bath of porridge?’
‘It’s a treatment for sunburn. Very soothing,’ she said. ‘A twenty-minute soak.’
‘Are you serious?’ Rick smiled. ‘A Scotsman in a bath of oatmeal.’
They were all grinning now, all except the patient himself.
She gave Rick an unamused grimace. ‘Just do it, will you please?’
‘Okay… One porridge bath coming right up,’ Rick said, squeezing past her at the door.
