Tea & Tedium

July 1, 1883

Had tea with the ladies at Mrs. Mercer’s this afternoon. It’s hard to dislike her dusty crumpets when they’re accompanied by such tokens as this lovely leather-bound diary. She gifted it me for Canada Day; scarlet and gold, it’s simply regal! I’d say it amounts to my finest possession. I bet she knows that, too, the cow. How she does go on about her trips to New York City and summers in Saratoga, knowing full well the rest of our histories—histories erased with migration, histories left behind, histories we must pretend never existed at all. Kingston is as nice as we any of us have had it. Except for Mrs. Bethany Mercer, of course.

I wondered at first what to write in here, and Mrs. Mercer suggested I record my daily thoughts. Sly Louise said that the pages were likely to remain empty in that case, and everyone laughed politely. I remarked that at least I could think about words and not simply pictures like a child, which was in poor taste for Louise is illiterate. Of all the ladies she is the most well-off, second only to Mrs. Mercer. She could embroider the skirt off any girl in town and surely plays the finest music; but there’s no use for brains in a girl like Louise, a sandwich-board socialite brandishing her family’s wealth and reputation in search of an even wealthier husband. She often teases me about living on a farm, though I insist it is in name only. The only animals we keep are several hens, and they were left behind by the previous owners whose histories are as mysterious and vapid as our own. I’ve become quite attached to the feathery creatures, as the days grow longer and quieter with each one that passes. My husband, William, has suggested I get one of those factory jobs making collars and cuffs for the men at the fort; but I know some women who work in those factories, and it doesn’t seem to me like it’s got anything to do with sewing at all.

Sometimes I will purchase a pail of milk from Mr. Winston down the road and make butter. He owns three cows—what gentle beasts they are! They let me stroke their velvet noses which expel steam so hot you can see it, even in July. There are no cows on the farm, though I’ve often asked William if he would purchase one. He says he might as well burn fifty dollars and strangle a hen, for squandered money and a dead animal is all the return he’d receive from that venture. When he sees I am serious he says he will think about it, but he has yet to bring it up again. I give him some of the butter to try, spreading it on our toast and frying it with the cabbage for dinner, hoping it will urge him to exclaim something like, “Dear Wife! Never have I tasted such fine and creamy butter; what are you doing cooped up in this house? We must get you a stall at the market at once and four, five cows! To rival Mrs. Winston,” for she is truly the one who makes the best butter in town.

I was embarrassed by the diary’s dearness, juxtaposed against the unimpressive frock that is my only good dress, that I almost rejected it outright. I’m not so certain it wouldn’t be the first thing burgled should such a nightmare ever befall us. It’s a likely one, too, as William refuses to install anything more secure on the house than an iron bolt he fashioned himself. He says it is sufficient, but I know it’s more to do with the fact that we can barely afford the swatches I need to repeatedly mend this pathetic dress. I haven’t the heart to tell him that even I was able to pick it one night when I’d accidentally left the hens outside. I crept outside, shoeless in my urgency, the mud squishing delightfully between my toes. (That is the sort of detail best kept to the confines of these pages; the ladies like to act as though things like dirt and mud do not exist, though they are the very things that have provided their mining tycoon husbands with what money they have.) The hens had scattered across the hills adjacent the farmyard, their speckled hides dotting the black-and-blue landscape like baubles gleaming in the moonlight. Upon my return to the house, I was faced with the infernal lock whose key—which I’d not yet seen in my life—was somewhere inside. Eventually, with a bit of fiddling and a piece of scrap fencing, I heard the soft thud of the bolt sliding open.

Despite a lack of experience, William has found work at the blacksmith’s making iron spikes for the railroad that’s being put down; yet, no habit or hobby for myself is good enough for him. He says I am most useful at home, where I keep his house clean, stomach full—and bed warm, he always adds, slipping an arm around my waist. He leans in close to my ear as he says this, attempting to be sensual but it’s only very loud; and sometimes I flinch which he takes in personal offence. Indeed, for all the tea and tedium, my work is never done until William returns and rolls ungraciously on top of me, no matter how asleep I am pretending to be. I lie perfectly heavy and still, even if he kisses my neck and it tickles unbearably. It’s easier if he’s been to the alehouse. I can smell the drink on his breath, hot like the cows’ but acrid, yeasty. He’s not been violent with me like Jane Beaufort’s husband is with her, though, and for that I suppose I am grateful. She wraps scarves round her neck and powders her eyes with talc, claiming the rest is sleep circles. We all know better, but decorum bodes we not pry. I’ve been desperate to confront her.

           Alas, tea at Mrs. Mercer’s is the only thing I have to look forward to in these early days of our new lives. William thinks socializing is what ladies like to do. He says that these new Canadian women have ruled society on a first-come, first-served basis; we aren’t so late to the game so as to have lost our chances at making it big, really growing our wealth, maybe getting one of those fancy houses up in the Heights overlooking the Islands in the bay. His eyes are in the stars if he thinks Mrs. Mercer is my ticket into high society any more than an alley-cat could help me dine with aristocrats. She revealed to me once, in confidence—and, I suspect, when she’d laced her tea with something stronger than pekoe—that her husband has lost all his money in the railway bid. The Board failed to assess its competition properly and had engaged in a mismanagement of resources. It could no longer afford the outflux of limestone and iron coming from the smithy which, in turn, would shut down the mines. The whole local industry was likely to collapse. The conversation had turned at that point, but I had stopped listening; and when William and I were together that night, I thought it was best that I keep to myself the destructive information that would shatter the dream he’d only begun to achieve.