A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [94]
During the next two or three years it would happen that Maurice would prosper to such an extent that not only were his own parents impressed by his successes but he almost won the favour of his father-in law. Barley rose to a dollar a bushel, and more and more of Gilderson’s ships sailed back and forth across the lake carrying the golden cargo to the American market. Caroline added a conservatory to the house and a trellised gazebo to the yard. In the course of one year she bought no fewer than twenty hats, each piece of headgear more flamboyant than the one that had preceded it. When she became pregnant, one of the larger bedrooms was turned into an elaborate nursery, and soon that nursery contained a squalling baby boy who would eventually become my father and whom Maurice decided to call Thomas Jefferson Woodman in deference to the Americans whose thirst was making them so rich. Some of these Americans patronized the Ballagh Oisin, but these were Americans with modest incomes, usually of Irish descent, attracted to the hotel by its Gaelic moniker and its views of a lake that reminded them of the sea.
Even Annabelle had to admit that things were going well. The spoiled Caroline had taken, with surprising enthusiasm, to motherhood. Maurice had been sensible enough to hire men knowledgeable in the ways of farming operations while he was kept busy by the very gratifying pastime of keeping the books and investing the returns. Branwell painted all winter and amused and saw to his guests all summer. Everyone doted on the child, whom they called T.J. for short, and when this child began to use language, Marie revived her stories, bringing into the occasional evening the wolf, her slaughtered parents, her own trip to Orphan Island, the epidemics that swept through that institution, small white coffins arriving on a dark brown sleigh, the delivery of stone angels, and a number of other wonderfully terrifying circumstances that might occur on the road from childhood to adolescence.
There weren’t many clients any more—the timber business being what it was. Annabelle mostly busied herself with annotating her splinter book, with painting, and, when the season permitted, she worked on what was becoming an impressive series of flower gardens near the house. Still, over the course of the next few years, she returned to her father’s office every now and then to record transactions concerning the salvage enterprise in one of his ledger books, an enterprise that had, in recent months, begun to pick up somewhat. When she was in the office she still sometimes made half-hearted, unsuccessful attempts to sort out everything her father had left behind. She had not been able to force herself to roll up the maps of the bogs, however, and they had become such a permanent—though dusty—feature of the place she began to look on them as a sort of parchment carpet. On one afternoon in August, she had brought a good-sized feather duster with her so that she could clean up a bit. Perhaps, she mused as she worked, this is how entire civilizations become buried. Dust that is not removed might, over the course of time, accumulate to such an extent that eventually all architecture would be buried: columns and amphitheatres, temples and palaces. Sooner or later everything would succumb. If, in a thousand years, an archaeologist visited Timber Island, what would be left for him to dig up? Not much, she decided, a few stones from the foundation of the big house and bricks from the chimney, an anvil from the smithy, perhaps. By the time the word anvil entered her mind Annabelle had stopped dusting and was looking out the west window toward the quay. Various sails and funnels were in view and among them she was surprised to see the sail of Branwell’s small boat, which was approaching her docks. She was glad to know he was on his way to the island: he hadn’t visited in months, and she, having resolved to pay more attention to salvage operations that had been left in her care, had several times postponed her planned visit to the hotel.
When she saw