Down Jasper Lane (Amherst Island Trilogy)

When Ellen finally emerged from her room her face was pale but composed. She found Hamish behind the counter in the store, devoid of customers in the late afternoon heat, and asked for paper and some pencils.

“Pencils, eh?” he said as he put a pad of crisp white paper on the marble-topped counter. “What are you planning to do with those?”

“I want to draw,” Ellen said simply, and Hamish leaned forward, impressed.

“Are you an artist, then?” He meant to tease, but Ellen gave him such a grown-up look of polite disdain that he felt quite uneasy.

“I like to draw,” she said, and took the paper and pencils. “Thank you very much for these, Uncle Hamish.”

Later Hamish confessed to Ruth, “she seemed quite set on it, poor thing. I wonder what she’ll draw?”

“Girlish nonsense, I shouldn’t wonder,” Ruth replied shortly. She sat in front of their bedroom mirror, plaiting her long silvery blonde hair. Even at almost fifty she looked beautiful to Hamish, far too elegant and even regal to be his wife. He sometimes wondered how he’d ever managed to catch her. She pursed her lips. “I’ve never been impressed with Douglas, but I didn’t think him such a ne’er-do-well as to abandon his own daughter.”

“Ruth!” Hamish shifted uncomfortably. Douglas slept in the room next to theirs, and might be able to hear Ruth’s strident voice. “He’s all right. He just needs to find his place.”

“Which isn’t here, apparently,” Ruth returned. “I thought he was going to help at the store! Make a life for himself and the girl, rather than go haring off on his own foolish dreams and leave us with the consequences.”

Hamish could not think of an adequate reply. He was barely able to admit to himself that he actually felt relieved Douglas was going. His brother made him feel guilty, as if he had to apologize for his own success.

Douglas had even mentioned it once, when he’d told Ruth and Hamish he was leaving. “We had dreams once, didn’t we, Ham? It’s strange the way things turned out, after all.”

Hamish had nodded, flustered. “Yes... I suppose it is a bit odd,” he said.

“Ellen will be a help to us,” he said now to Ruth.

Ruth finished her plait and tossed it over one shoulder. “That remains to be seen.” She glanced out the window, the sky inky black, the town shrouded in darkness. “She might be of some use,” she relented after a moment. “It will be good for her, at any rate, to be kept busy.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “But I do pity the child. To lose her father so soon after her mot

her.”

“Douglas will come back,” Hamish said, although he knew he didn’t sound very convincing. Apparently Ruth didn’t think so either, for she gave him a rather scornful glance.

“And why should he?”

“For Ellen—”

“If he can leave her this easily, he won’t come back for her,” Ruth said flatly. “Absence doesn’t always make the heart grow fonder. He’ll forget, mark my words. He’ll forget her completely.”

“Ruth.” Hamish nodded towards the wall they shared with Douglas’ bedroom. “What if he heard you?”

“And what if he did? He needs to hear some sense. Perhaps then he’ll do his God-given duty by his daughter.”

Hamish climbed into bed. Sometimes Ruth seemed a hard woman, he knew, but he’d seen a moment of softness here and there with Ellen, and he hoped that might continue and grow yet. Perhaps without Douglas here, Ellen would look on them more kindly. Ruth might even become more of a mother to her.

“Ruth,” he asked hesitantly, “do you ever wish we’d been blessed with children?”

Ruth stiffened, her back still to Hamish. Hamish had always felt a bit sad that the babies he’d hoped for had never come along, but he and Ruth hadn’t spoken of it. They’d never had that kind of relationship; in truth, Hamish was still in awe that Ruth had decided to marry him at all. He’d been a mere stock boy at Hoey’s Department Store and she’d been a tall, elegant figure behind the gloves counter. He couldn’t quite remember how it had all come about, really. He’d suggested they go for a walk on Balgrayhill and Ruth had accepted with surprising alacrity. As for the marriage proposal... he’d bumbled his way through something and she’d briskly asked him if he was proposing. Hamish had turned beet red and nodded, and Ruth had accepted. Three years later they landed at Ellis Island.

Now she carefully laid down her silver-backed brush, her back still to him. “That, Hamish Copley,” she told him, a slight tremor in her usually strident voice, “is a foolish question.”

She blew out the lamp and got into bed, and Hamish could not see her face in the darkness. Yet something in him—or perhaps her voice when she’d spoken—compelled him to reach over and clasp her hand. And to his surprise Ruth threaded her fingers through his own and did not let go.

*****

Ellen woke up early again, this time to work on her drawing. She’d finished with tears, the hours on her bed clutching a newly washed Celia having spent her, and now she felt as empty and hollow as a shell. She knelt on the floor, the paper spread out before her.

She was drawing from memory, a sketch of her and Da on the deck of the ship. They were both laughing, looking out to sea, their elbows leaning on the rail.

Since she hadn’t seen it from the outside, she could only imagine what it looked like, remember how it had felt. The waves, the sparkling sun, the hope.