past any boulder
solid and unforgiving.
No choice but
sit down and cry,
or give up.
proving the futility
of living a dream
of daring to venture
yet a chosen path is blocked;
with elbow grease and
a little more time
finding my way
refreshes my spirit
and quickens my step.
“If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love,
you have to find the courage to live it.”
~ John Irving
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Heat turned down on summer,
wind in the trees, clouds in the sky
a peek from the sun warms the day
and we’re off!
Lunch with a friend at Smitty’s and a trip to The Plant Ranch at 5909 13th Ave filled my afternoon. With no intention to buy anything….at all……really……and yet a Black-eyed Susan found it’s way into my possession. I did need another pot so had to buy one! Stones in the bottom, potted with new soil and watered, my rather bent but healthy purchase was home. It did need support to stand straight. A search in my house revealed two pseudo cattails with long strong, straight stems! It pleases me to have my favourite bright flowers on my porch.
“Some adventures require nothing more than a willing heart
and the ability to trip over the cracks in the world.”
~ Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Review, Revision, Edit and Update
I rewrote several pieces in this Episode, beginning in the very first paragraph. The final sentences in that paragraph did not make sense, so were removed and rewritten. I'm not pleased with the title, but chose to leave it alone. I'll not go into detail about others later in the piece. It really reminds me that a good copy-editor is very necessary. I am very grateful for their good work.
Catching Up With Cook
Fashioning her life from abundance seemed far-fetched to Dez then. On some days, it still did. Her sister, however, was full of fanciful ideas. Dez was twelve and Emelina was fourteen. Dez, wanting to be known as Big D, was always playing at being an adventurer or gypsy. She did try her hand at tree planting one summer, but the grubby glamour of it quickly wore thin. Emelina, on the other hand, wanted to be just like Amy March in Little Women. Dez pooh-poohed her choice. “That's dumb, Em. Jo was the smart one. Climbing trees and chopping of her hair, scribbling stories, going off to the city by herself.” Sharing a bedroom, they had a strip of green tape down the middle. Dez's half of the bedroom was a mess. She couldn't tell her clean laundry from her dirty laundry and didn't really think it mattered. Emelina's side was neat a pin, not a speck of dirt to be found, and pretty as she could make it. Many times their mother shook her head with a laugh. “Emmie. Dez. I just give up on the both of you. Just make sure you keep your room clean.”
~~~~~
Driving to the Estate, Dez had decided to take a more scenic route. It was an early, but warm, spring day. Window rolled down, she spoke to the crying gulls that hovered in the air currents along the coast. “We’ve both landed where we wanted. I’ve had the life of a gypsy and here’s Em on an Estate, all kinds of money and a handsome doctor to boot. Hah!” She tap-wiggled her fingers on the steering wheel. Her adventures had not been the adventures of a twelve year old, but each one had taught her a lot about herself. How to roll with the punches, settle and be still when she was flat on her back, and pick up and move on again when it was time. Her sister’s money and people to do for her, had kept her seduced by the calm beauty at the estate, but stifled by the expectations her sister lived under. Since Covid when life spun out of everyone’s control, she had changed. Without her sister's staff in those early pandemic days, having to take Dez in, the two of them back together after years, her sister also had to change. She had believed that they wouldn’t be able to get along again. The distance between them was as great as it had ever been and included strips of green tape that kept them apart. Dez chuckled. “It was the green tape. We managed to get across it and be friends again.”
~~~~~
Dez followed the gravelled drive around the Estate house. Parking in front of the back porch, she turned off her old Jeep. Gathering up her battered leather bag and her Orchard manual, she stepped out on the gravel and walked up the steps. “Cook! Do you have coffee on? Have time for a visit?” She liked Emelina’s cook. No nonsense, much like the gardener Samuel. And her food! Always delicious. “Yes, I’m here Miss Dez. Coffee’s in the pot and I’m getting scones on the table. It’s tea for myself and a good visit with you. We’ve not crossed paths for quite a bit.” Dez did feel like giving Cook a hug, but was still hesitant because of the pandemic. “It is so good to see you! How are you? You were under the weather for a while? Where is everyone?” In the breath before the next question, Cook laughed and said. “Slow down, Miss. I am fine. I was never under the weather, just isolated when Martha was sick. My sister Lily passed away in England. Digby is in his office. Martha is still home but much better. Samuel’s in the garden. Your sister and her husband are out walking. There. Have I answered your questions?” Dez just stood and listened, breaking into a smile as Cook spelled it all out. “Oh, Cook, I’m so sorry about your sister! I know you loved her letters, and loved writing to her.” Cook sat down with her mug of tea. “Well let’s not talk about that. I get all teary and like to leave that til I get home. What about you? I know Miss Em has missed you, even though she sleeps in at your place when Dr. Jeremy is working.”
“We don’t really get much chance to visit. She’s up in the morning and gone til late in the afternoon. I’ve had a few afternoon jobs, so we just wave at each other. Leave notes like when we were kids.” Dez turned away from the table suddenly. “What’s that noise?” A rattling and a sharp bell broke into their conversation.
“Oh, that’s just the dumbwaiter. The two of them must be back in for the snack I sent up for them. Dr. Jeremy has eaten every crumb I’ve sent up there. Miss Em sends me a note asking for more. Seems I can’t fill him up.” She brightened up, pulling pencil and paper from her apron. “Here. Write her a note about something and we’ll send it up to them.”
~~~~~
“Meet me by the garden shed in thirty minutes.
Come alone. Make sure you are not followed.
(but you can bring Jeremy)
Big D
Her note secured to a pottery plate with sticky tape, Dez set it in the dumbwaiter. She rang the bell on the shaft. Pulling on the noisy old chain, the note disappeared into the darkness.
“I had dreams, but I didn’t have the sense that they would
necessarily work out. They seemed very far-fetched.”
~ Greta Gerwig
England, 1862. Charlotte Harding and Harriet Baldwin, sisters, were on the edges of British society. Harriet, the older sister is married to the Honourable Charles Baldwin, MP a man of means who is vying for a greater position in the British Parliament. Charlotte is twenty one, unmarried and lives with them, taken in by her brother-in-law when her parents died. The most recent marriage choice for her, an unpleasant man, is key to aiding Charles in his bid for position. This is a time when women were no more than chattel, the British Empire was advancing their colonization into Canada with the attendant issues of racism, small pox and class divisions. Leslie Howard in her first novel The Brideship Wife, takes Charlotte and Harriet out of England aboard the Tynemouth, one of four ships, that became known as a bride ship. This is one of the historical details in Leslie Howard’s novel. At this time of the gold rush, the men that worked the claims were clamouring for wives. Some were impoverished and still panning for gold, while others ‘struck it rich’ either spending their new found wealth or using it to develop their ‘free’ parcels of land. There was little concern about the pasts of the women that arrived on Victoria’s shores. Charlotte, and her sister Harriet, were essentially banished from England by Harriet’s husband. On the ship, Charlotte showed compassion for those on the lower decks. Men in dreadful working conditions to man the ship; women confined to the lower decks by the Reverend and Mrs. Burke bringing religion to this new land. Shipboard romance is another part of Charlotte’s story. But she was determined not to fall into the role of the good wife again.
In reality, bride ships were the result of the Columbia’s Emigration Society’s initiative to bring women to aid in populating the colonies. The Brideship Wife was, in turn, strait laced and lively, as the women were shunted from their lives in England on the three month sea voyage to their new, and hopefully better, lives. Some did marry and raise children, some did not. In general they did find very different lives outside of some of the constraints of English society. This novel is a fast and easy read, despite the details packed within its pages. My only concern was that there seemed almost implausible jumps from one location to another. Possibly my own issue.
All in all, I found The Brideship Wife to be a very enjoyable read.
“After all I’d been doing to salvage my reputation, I was
taking a risk, but I had no other choice.”- Charlotte Harding
~ Leslie Howard, The Brideship Wife
Title: The Brideship Wife
Author: Leslie Howard (raised in Penticton, B.C.; avid interest in her province.
Copyright: 2020
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
Type: Novel
Format: Soft Cover
ISBN - 978-1-5082-5935-0
ISBN - 978-1-5082-5936-7 (ebook)
Lily and I were the best of friends. We did everything together, until she married and moved away. And that’s really where my story started. If anyone had told me I’d be a cook on an estate on an Island in Canada, I would have told them they were telling me a lot of nonsense. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a teacher, just like my favourite aunt. My parents were thrilled when I was accepted to a small Teachers College in the south of England. Before I could even get started, I fell ill and missed the entire first year. The doctors called it an endocarditis. I only knew it was an infection in my heart with a long recovery. My dream of being a teacher just disappeared. While I was recovering at home, I started cooking for my parents. They both worked, Lily had married and lived in another town. Cooking was all I could do. At first it was only supper, but as my energy and health improved, my cooking improved. Reading all my mother’s old cook books, I was excited when I saw my grandmother’s notes. Cutting a recipe in half, or adding different ingredients, noting which wood kept the steadiest oven temperature. I got quite an education from those old cookbooks. I started cooking lunch, baking pies, and learning how to preserve foods. I read everything I could get my hands on, especially if it had anything to do with food and cooking - magazines, newspapers and cookbooks
How did I get to Canada? Why, on a boat of course. Not just any boat. You know all those magazines, newspapers and cookbooks I read? Well there, on the inside back page of one of the cooking magazines was a little ad for chefs on a fancy luxury liner. In a fit of silliness, I sent in my application. I knew they wouldn’t hire me. I wasn’t a chef and my employer was my mother. It was just a bit of fantasy. I didn’t see how it could hurt anything. But when I saw my mother’s tears and heard my father’s voice tremble, I knew I had been wrong. The job on that ship was mine and I was ready for adventure. I'd been tied down to my bed and then my home for too long for a young girl. Not a chef but as an apprentice chef. That was the fancy name for the dishwasher and the general dogsbody. I had the time of my life, seeing all the women in their diamonds and rubies, satin dresses and furs; the men in tuxedos and tails. Learning things like knife skills and making hollandaise sauce. I had never heard the word ‘plating’ before. Oh, I’d seen it when I was reading but didn’t understand what it really meant. Seeing the chef bending over each plate, tenderly placing each item in careful order was like watching an artist.
Sadly, the luxury liner was held up in dry dock. Most of the staff lost their jobs. Being from out of country, I had only the money I had saved while on the ocean. Young and ready for adventure, I decided to work my way across this great country. When I reached the west coast, I would fly back to England. What a story I would have to tell? I did write Lily everyday, but letters don’t tell all the details. The charming Quebecois that wooed me with his brown curls and French Canadian accent. The handsome young man in Niagara Falls that swept me off my feet for at least a week. Learning to hitchhike, landing in Winnipeg just as winter was showing me what cold really was. Remaining there until spring thawed the prairies, I worked in restaurants and hotels to earn enough for a cheap boarding house. Mandy and her shy brother, Will, taught me the sport of ‘curling’ and I wobbled on skates on the Red River. A bonfire on the banks warmed us, cooked our supper and burned our marshmallows. Going on through Saskatchewan and Alberta, I thought the land would never end. The prairies, with the patchwork of fields green, yellow and blue, filled me with awe. Regina was a windblown city on the flat plain with a lake right in the middle of it. On the prairies I saw animals and birds I’d never seen before. Coming through Alberta, leaving Calgary and another new friend, I was unprepared for more grand sights. The Rocky Mountains. I had no words to describe them to Lily. They were truly grand and magnificent. In Vancouver, restaurants needing sous chefs or just plain cooks, lined the busy streets. I thought I had learned all there was to know about cooking, but my head was filled with so much more.
My plan to return to England from Vancouver was derailed when I was asked “Have you been to over to the Island?” His blue eyes sparkled. “We could go together and I could take you to my home town. Stay at my parent’s house in Hartley and I’ll take you around the Island.” That relationship lasted about as long as all the rest of the Canadian boys, but it got me to this job. Still reading magazines and cookbooks, another ad intrigued me. “Wanted. A Cook for a small family. There will be occasional large dinners that will be included in this employment. Contact Digby, Sr. at the Beaufort Estate.” Another adventure called my young self. When Digby, Sr. interviewed me, I was a bit intimated by him and by the Estate, but I got the job. Planning to stay only for four years and return to England, that four years is long gone. No one calls me a chef or a dogsbody here. I’m Cook to most everyone. I live alone in a little house on the grounds and am content. By the way, his blue eyes still sparkle.
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly and without fear for new and richer experience.,”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Mountains and molehills, 
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| Lynn Canyon Park, Suspension Bridge |
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| Note the peanut above the rhizomes! |
