The Lock

A chapter of confrontations, the McKays, Ian and Peter are all forced to face their different pasts.

Chapter Seventeen

The Lock

 

                Maureen brushed aside a white curtain and looked out of her bedroom window at the pelting snow.   Sleep would not come to her that night. Peter was not the only one plagued by bad dreams.  Most nights when the dreams came to her came George had been there to soothe her and to comfort her.  Not this night. She tried reading Pride and Prejudice but interest in the marital ambitions of the Bennett sisters eluded her. Again she had felt large hands dragging her over the floor, pain searing, drowning her ability to think, leaving only unreasoning fear.  She had been touched by evil. Nothing could erase that stain especially when she knew that part of that evil had been her own.  Peter might have dismissed the memory of her fleeing the room leaving him alone with death but she could not.  It would steal upon her in the depths of the night.

                The memory stiffened her determination to protect Peter.  It also made her more aware of the need to compare her own shortcomings with those of her father. Every so often, during the day or at night, she would compare her own life with that of Alex’s.  It was during one of these ruminations that her thoughts touched upon the Foley sisters.

                On the evening before Alex’s funeral she had asked Ian Campbell, “When the soldiers came for Bridget, Alex was alone. What were the people doing?”

                “People?”

                “The people of  Kilmarnock.”

                Ian shrugged. He always disliked thinking about the affair. “Going about their business I suppose.  What else could they do?  They had families and homes.  They weren’t going to risk them standing against the law, least of all for a Foley.  Alex knew that.”

                “You were constable.  Couldn’t you do anything?”

                Ian thought for a moment. “I could have resigned I suppose but mother needed the money and Alex spoke against it.  He said that it wouldn’t have done any good.  So when the soldiers came for Bridget I took ill for a couple of days.  Not very heroic. was it?”

                “Wasn’t there anything else that could have been done?”

                Ian thought for a moment.  “I could have killed Sam Foley. God knows, I wish I had.  Anyway.  Sam’s been … gone for a long time.”

                “What about Isabel?”

                “Isabel?”

                “Isabel Foley. Bridget’s sister.”

                Ian wished that he could get back to his forge.  “What about her?”

                “Alex told me about Sam Foley and Bridget.   What about Isabel? Was she ...?”

                Ian felt his patience ebbing. “Sam Foley’s been gone a long time.  If you have any questions about the Foleys you should ask Elizabeth Foley.”

                “How?”

                Campbell could dismiss the matter.  Maureen could not.  Isabel remained a fragment of a past that had never been resolved.  Write a letter to a woman in a family of illiterates? Travel there and talk to her?  She did not know the way and she was in no condition to travel anywhere. How would she even see Elizabeth Foley??  Send her an invitation to have tea? Write a letter?  No Foley could read or write.  Anyway, who would take a message? .For now she could do nothing.  Nothing.   She thought of Alex.  How many times had he decided the same.  How many times had doing nothing eaten away at him?

                On her dresser lay an unfinished letter to Judge Strachan.   She knew that she try to finish it but Maureen could think only of George and Peter.  She pressed a fingertip against the cool dampness of the windowpane.  When she had been a little girl, this had been one of her favourite winter games.  On the rimed pane she would sketch houses trees and animals, a habit discarded with so many other childish habits.  Even now on cold nights when she found herself alone she could not resist pressing a finger against the frosted glass. Her finger tip withdrew leaving behind a small hole in the rime.  She blew on it widening the hole.

                As Maureen watched the hole grow she considered what she should write next in her letter. In the past she had always found writing to be a simple matter.  One simply related what was happening.  Nothing simpler.  On her desk lay an envelope that had travelled all the way from Rio de Janeiro. .  Water stained and crumpled, the letter had created quite a stir.  No one in Kilmarnock had ever received an envelope from such an outlandish place before.   The sight of the envelope reminded Maureen that another letter waited to be written, a letter for a future as yet unknown address.

                The only person in Kilmarnock disinterested in the strange letter was Master MacTavish.  He had glanced at the return address as he had pocketed the envelope, a Mrs. Theresa Wagner.

                “A friend of Mrs. McKay travelling to California” explained George picking up the letter at the Royal Arms.  “Do you want the stamps?”

                Peter studied the two rectangular pieces of paper, marked by a black bulls eye and the number300. “Brazil?”

                “It’s an empire in South America.  Would you like the stamps? I hear some people like to collect them. Who knows?  They could be worth something someday.”

                Peter looked at the stamps.  It would be like owning bits of a foreign land that he would never see. “Yes … please.”

***

                As Maureen sat at her desk she decided that in a matter concerning Peter others should be heard, the six guardians responsible for him.  She would invite them to come in the guise of a Christening party. T

The presence of Judge Strachan she saw as being crucial to the party’s success.   His social position and personal prestige would enhance the importance of the affair.               In the letter to the judge she tried to summarize the contents of the letter from Rio. Theresa Wagner, once Katrina Leuger had written of her journey from New York, about her meeting a man, Sam Baretlett and about their proposed journeying to the Oregon.  Maureen summed up the main points of the letter.  She then outlined the difficulties that Peter had been having, his continued nightmares,   and his letter to Maggie Ferguson culminating in the Ferguson boys attack.  More and more he had withdrawn into his room.  Except for his work in George’s office and his attendance at church he would not leave the hill. Their conversations became ever briefer and more formal. She feared that if something did not change quickly the boy would be lost to them.

***

                Despite the inviting warmth Peter hovered at the edge of the open doorway of the Grimsby home. He looked at the tumult inside the house.  Too many people.  Too much noise.  He sniffed the aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the house.  Peter had always disliked the smell of coffee. As George stepped through the low door he looked back at him noticing his hesitation. “Come on in.  They don’t bite. It’s too cold to stay outside.”

                Peter stepped through the doorway.

                A tall black haired man was shaking the doctor’s hand.  Donald like his father was a large man with the high cheekbones and black straight hair of his Algonquin mother.  His wife Susan had been the product of a liaison between an HBC trader who had settled on a farm north of Brockville and an Algonquin woman from the Ottawa. 

                George turned to Peter.  “My assistant. Peter MacTavish.  Alex’s son.”

                 Donald nodded at Peter.

                “Your father, he was a good man.”

                Peter ducked his head.  “Yes.”

                “How’s Bet” Elijah asked.

                Susan, her black hair tied into braids by blue and red beads placed two bowls of stew on the table.  “Talk later.  Eat first.”

                The doctor removed his coat. “Begging your pardon ma’am but we’d best see to Bet first.”

                George sat beside the little girl’s bed.  Bet was in a deep sleep.  Donald and Susan followed him into the room but kept a respectful distance. George sat down beside her bed.  Peter hovered at the room’s door.  George signalled to him to approach. “You can’t treat a patient at arms length.”  He then turned back to examining the little girl. “Bring me some hot water.”

                Peter looked about him.      He saw a low plastered ceiling, smoke-stained roof beams, walls hung with tools, rifles and snowshoes.  The air in the cabin was heavy with the scent of tanned deer hide and fresh baked bread.  Donald and Susan were devout Methodists so interspersed between tools and weapons were cheap biblical prints with Old Testament scenes.  A paddle had been hung next to Dore’s the great Flood. Ignoring the doctor Peter looked on as Elijah gulped down great spoonfuls of stew and chunks of biscuits. He looked up at the images of people being swept away, of children clinging to rocks.  Beside him he could hear the Grimsby boys giggling. They sounded as the children had the first day he had gone to the school.  The presence of the strangers the warmth of the cabin, the smell of the coffee all pressed in on him.  Excusing himself he lurched outside and vomited. 

                Elijah brought the doctor a basin and a pitcher of hot water.  George looked up as he entered the room.

                “Where’s Peter?”

                “Went outside. Privy probably. He didn’t look too good.”

                George began to wash his hands.  “Well, one patient at a time.”

                “I shouldn’t worry” said Elijah.  “He won’t be gone long.”

                Half an hour later, George sat down to a supper of stew, having received payment of a shilling and a fresh loaf of bread.  As he looked around the room he noticed that Peter was not there

***

                Peter had slipped into the carriage shed where Elijah had parked the sleigh.  He knew that when the doctor was finished he would come here for the sleigh.  Not much had changed thought Peter as he climbed into the seat and pulled the buffalo robe up over him.   Six months before he had turned away from a house to seek shelter in a barn.  The building he had sought shelter in had changed.  Nothing more. He would wait for the doctor here.  Closing his eyes he tried to sleep.

                Long scented manicured fingers slipped down his belly reaching for his genitals.  The fingers paused touching the scrotum and then moved in feeling the outside edge of the anus. They moved on, up between his buttocks towards the small of his back.     The memories confirmed what he had long known, the evil within him was too deep to ever be erased.  They were right to leave him here. What surprised him was that they had not done it before.  George would leave him with the lockkeeper, in the prison where he belonged.

                On the night when he had told the judge and the others about Radek and Frederick he knew that they would send him to prison that night. Yet, they had not sent him away.  Neither had they asked him to testify against Radek   Odd that.  Of what use was he to them without that testimony?.  He surmised that their feelings towards Alex had prompted their decision to keep him up until now.

                Peter closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come. He knew that in the morning the doctor would return to Kilmarnock leaving him here with the lockkeeper but he did not want to think of that.  He could feel the wind gusting, piercing through the hide.  From the house came laughter and the scratching of a fiddle.   He could hear feet stamping and the clapping of hands.  He turned away from the noise and concentrated on his own thoughts. He thought of the night when he had fled from the hotel in Kingston.  He thought of when Frederick came.  Franz had unlocked the door and Frederick, reeking of schnapps, had stumbled into the room.  Franz had packed up his cards and had left glad to be out of the room.

                Peter thought back to Milos.  Every evening after supper, Milos would drink, each drink making him noisier.  Then the beatings would start, triggered by something that Josef said or did or by something that he did not do or say.  Frederick was different.  As he drank he became quieter, sadder.  Then Josef knew that for that night he could sleep undisturbed.  Frederick had often asked him to talk about his life in Jablunka.  He had asked Katrina if that were permitted.  She had said yes but   he should not inform Herr Radek.  So when Frederick asked about the school and hospital that he had ordered to be built, Josef had told him that he had known of no school and no hospital in Jablunka.  He had told him about Maminka, about Janos and Holena. 

                Frederick stopped asking.  His drinking became heavier.  He would sit for hours in the large chair in his room, a bottle of brandy beside him.   Sometimes, noticing that Josef was awake, he would tell him to go to sleep  Josef would lie in bed knowing that Frederick lay ne3xt to him, thinking..

                Sometimes , deep in the night, Josef would brush away the arm holding him and slip out of bed.  He knew that he could not go very far.  Someone would always be watching but he could slip into the toilet.  There he would crouch on the floor.  Some nights he would sit there and think of the past before the typhoid when he played with Holena and Janos.  That moment, that space would be his free from their looking eyes. Some nights the shaking would begin, first in the shoulders then the arms and the legs.  He would crouch in the dark, sobbing.  Then when it had passed he would wash his face, careful to flush the basin before he returned to the bed.   Once as he slipped back under the covers Frederick sat up and turned towards him. 

                “Tell me about Jablunka.”

                Josef told him the little that he knew.  He mentioned Pan Dombrowski, the village overseer, and the great house that he lived him, the priest, the peasant houses, the darkness of the forests.  Frederick lay there listening.  Then he nodded.

                “Go to sleep.”

                Alex’s voice whispered, “Remember your father’s name. Doctor Alexander Robert MacTavish.”

                Another voice broke through.  “Rubbish.” Radek smirked.  “You know who your father is, don’t you, pig?”

                “Go away.”

                Radek shook his head. “That poor old fool.  He was so deluded by pain and by opium he didn’t know what he was doing most of the time.  Interesting, don’t you think, the fact that both he and Frederick took opium.  Made your company more bearable I suppose.”

                Radek brought out his final crushing argument.  “You remember the way you crawled to me puking and mewling, begging for another chance for Frederick to f**k you?  Remember?  Why would anyone want something like you as a son?”

                Peter lunged at him pounding him with his fists.  “Shut up!  Shut up!”

                Leaping out of the sleigh Peter fled into the swirling snow.

   Seasons, Amazon Press