—
The Intercolonial Hotel rose, three storeys high, against the blue sky. Flora, gazing up, wondered who might be inhabiting its rooms. She stood in a crowd of women, next to Josephine and Carrie.
Carrie had given a speech to the WCTU in Permelia’s parlour, on the subject of the suffrage petition. Afterwards, the women had felt the need to mount a protest. Impulsively, they had swept down Main Street, their heels clicking on the wooden sidewalk—twenty women carrying parasols, white ribbons pinned to white dresses, bright under the early spring sky; their reflections flickered in the window of McAllister’s Dry Goods, crossed its display of chinaware—berry sets, dessert bowls. They flickered, too, across the grocery store window, making a watery, layered painting: hatted, veiled women overlying rounds of cheese, a display of raisins and nuts, strings of sausages, brooms with green and blue handles.
As they had crossed the railway tracks, nearing the hotel, Flora had been pricked by memory of her arrival in Pleasant Valley. The track ran due west, merging to a single, silver glint; picking up her feet to step over the steel rails, she felt the culpability of not having told Josephine that Mr. Tuck had offered to pay her for her work, nor that he wished her to visit the sisters at Hilltop. She polished the intention to tell, like something fragile that must be perfect when eventually offered. She prepared her words, trying to see the situation from all angles. She needed to save money, especially now that Enid had been found. She would need real work once she and Enid set up housekeeping. Jasper Tuck’s little houses were exquisite and she was not ashamed to endorse them. Yet she sensed that she was taking a backwards step, one which was dangerous and predicated on fear; and like so much else in her life, a thing about which she had no choice.
The talk increased as they gathered in front of the Sample Room, a small pub attached to the hotel with one large window whitened by drawn curtains, like a blind eye. Around Flora, excited voices gained strength.
“…things that Premier Blair says about us, I become angrier…”
“They think we don’t want to vote.”
“…said no privilege has ever been denied us.”
“It shouldn’t be a privilege. It’s our right.”
Flora noticed that Josephine was listening, intently, turning to gaze at whichever woman was shouting the loudest.
Two men wearing suspenders, coats slung over their arms, approached the pub, intending to go in. They stopped, staring at the women, muttered to one another. They continued on down the street, glancing back.
Mrs. Humbolt, the president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union local branch, made her way to the front of the crowd.
“Christ’s kingdom is based on the principles of human equality and brotherhood,” she called out to the women. “Human equality means the equality of men and women. Since men appoint us as the repositories of religious and moral virtue, we must use our influence to perfect society. Now, we know that it is women and children who suffer from the evils of drink. We seek a modest and pure world. As the Greek writer Xenophon said, moderation in all…”
The upstairs window opened. A man thrust his head out.
“Ladies, I am going to ask you to leave my premises. You are keeping the gentlemen from my door.”
A chorus of responses rose.
“…send them home to us drunk…”
“…our sidewalk as much as…”
“…things healthful; total abstinence from all things…”
Mrs. Humbolt finished her speech and the women bent their heads in silent prayer. Some held prayer books. Pages rippled in the breeze. Approaching men veered, crossed the street, gathered to stare.
“Now,” Carrie remarked, once the bowed heads raised, “we will take the suffrage petition from door to door.”
A bucket, out the window over their heads. Icy water unfurled, a fringed wave, billowing, widening, the spume separating into silver bullets. Outraged screams. Another bucket followed, another deluge.
“And don’t come back!”
Flora received the full contents on top of her head, water running down her neck, soaking her cape as she ran forward to salvage a prayer book, lying upside down on the wooden walk.
THIRTEEN Green Rabbits
FLORA SHUFFLED SPRING DIRT from her boots on a pattern of green rabbits. She waited on the mat, just inside the door. The Hilltop house smelled of beeswax, oranges and roast beef. A piano went abruptly silent.
A tall, frail woman drifted down the stairs. Another, older and full-bodied, came along the hallway. Both carried the air of having left more absorbing tasks, yet their faces opened on seeing Flora and she realized that her hair, loosened and wisped around her exertion-flushed face, would be holding the sunlight; and saw an expression of delight and wonder creep over the women’s faces.
“My name is Flora Salford. I work for Mrs. Galloway. She has a boarder who makes little houses. He asked…”
Her voice trailed off. She gestured behind her towards a miniature house in a child’s wagon, parked on the stone path.
“Oh, my, Rosamund,” the thin sister exclaimed, looking past Flora. “Isn’t that something!”
They followed her down the steps to the walkway. The morning was warm, an earthy scent rising from soil soaked by night rain. The thin sister gripped her hands and pressed them to her breastbone. Flora knelt.
“See how he carves the shingles.” She pointed at the pieces of cedar, shaped like fish scales or arrowheads.
The sisters walked around the house, tapping at the glass windows, stroking the frail railings. Flora summoned a tone of proprietary pride.
“These are spindled porch railings. And see how the trim is painted a different colour.”
Flora tipped back the hinged roof.
“Oh, how clever!”
One by one, she extracted a four-poster bed covered with a quilt, a cast-iron stove and a tiny Persian rug. She set them in a row on the path. “He could provide doll’s house people, if you want.”
She paused.
“I could tell you the price.”
Rosamund, the heavier and evidently elder sister, made a hasty, dismissive motion with
