Читать книгу Your Time, My Time - Ann Walsh - Страница 7

August 24, 1980

Dear Dad,

If my writing seems a bit funny it’s because I’m writing this on my knees as I sit in the cemetery in Barkerville. I have a special place here, under a big old pine tree, out of the way, where the tourists don’t often come. There is one lonely grave in this spot, but I can’t read what the marker says (except for one big S or maybe one of those funny f’s that they used to make in the old days). The rest of the inscription is weathered and grown over with moss and I haven’t got the heart to scrape it away and see what it says.

I like this spot, and I am spending a lot of time here. It is quiet and peaceful. I bring my book and read (or write letters), and sometimes I snooze. Mom is really busy these days and still very tired when she’s finished work, so I don’t see much of her. She doesn’t mind my spending so much time here. It keeps me out of her hair! Somehow this spot isn’t spooky at all, in spite of it being in a graveyard. I don’t feel nearly as lonely here as I do sitting in the trailer in Wells, so almost every day I get out my bike early in the morning and ride up to Barkerville. Sometimes I go into the town itself, but most of my afternoons are spent right here, under my favourite tree, with a book from the Pacific 66.

I’ve even memorized some of the headstones. Do you know that there are people here who came from all over the world? It is fascinating to read the epitaphs and wonder what they were like and why they came to Barkerville. The graves are so old that some have full grown trees inside the picket fences that enclose them.

Barkerville is a great place! I think I told you about how it made me feel so peculiar the first day I came here. Well, it still gives me the shivers once in a while, but now that I know it better, that feeling has almost gone away. I spend hours looking at the exhibits and wondering what it would have been like to live here when the town was new.

My favourite display is the Bowron house, built in 1898 by William Bowron, the son of one of the Gold Commissioners. There is a beautiful old piano in the house with one of those mannequins playing it. I don’t like the mannequins very much. I’ve found out that they’re made of papier maché, not plaster as I thought at first, but I still don’t like them. The Judge says that six men brought the piano into Barkerville on their backs in the early 1860’s for use in one of the saloons!

Anyway, the Bowron house, like all the exhibits, is furnished with antique furniture that fits right in with the age of the town. It has a funny old sideboard with china plates and jugs on it, a clock on the wall that really works, music on the piano stand and an old book lying on a round table in the middle of the room. Then, when you go around to the back of the house, you can see the kitchen with the wood cook stove and the pots and pans and kitchen utensils just sitting there, as if they were waiting for someone to come in and start supper. I really enjoy Barkerville and, as you can see, I’m learning some history as well! I wish you and Brian could come up and visit. I know you’d love it, too.

Well, in case Mom hasn’t written to you yet, I guess I’d better tell you that she is sort of worried about me. But she doesn’t have to be. She’s complaining because I haven’t made any friends yet, and although she says that Barkerville is a good place for me to spend my time, I know she thinks that I could find better things to do than to come here every day. But Dad, there’s absolutely nothing to do in Wells! It’s not fair, actually. She’s the one who dragged me up here in the first place, and now she’s nagging at me for enjoying myself. So, if she does write to you, don’t worry. I have made some friends, good friends, but they are different from the type of friends I had in Vancouver.

I’ve told you about the Judge. He is a fantastic person, and knows a lot of the real history of Barkerville — the things you can’t find in books. He has a daughter who’s married and lives in Nova Scotia, and he brought her up himself after his wife died, which is one of the reasons, I guess, he understands me so well. He treats me as if I were an adult; he never talks down to me the way some teachers do. He’s a good listener too, and some days when I get really lonely he’ll let me talk for hours about you and Brian and Vancouver. I’m glad he’s here.

I’ve also met the members of the acting troupe of the Theatre Royal. They let me see the show for free if I sit down front and babysit all the little kids they put there.

The show is a lot of fun. It’s a melodrama with music played on an old piano, and the audience is supposed to boo the villain and cheer for the hero. They really get carried away sometimes. The whole theatre seems to shake with the noise. Linda, the girl who plays the heroine, is a friend of the Judge and she says that when I get older I can audition for a part in the play. She says that it’s hard work doing two performances a day all summer, but it’s a great experience and you really learn how to act because you have to keep on doing it, day after day, whether you feel like it or not. Maybe I’ll do that, in a few years.

So, don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got lots of friends. It’s just that they are a bit older than I am. But you always did say that I was very mature for my age. And when school starts in a week I know I’ll meet some of the other kids and find a friend my own age. At least, I hope so.

I must go. It’s nearly five and I have to head back to Wells. I am getting enormous leg muscles from all of this bicycling, but I’m not gaining any weight. Mom has lost a few pounds, too.

I miss you and Brian. Do you think you could find a free week-end to come up and visit? You could have rooms in the Jack O’Clubs Hotel. You wouldn’t have to stay with us and move in on Mom’s space. I really would like to see you. Please come.

All my love to you and Brian. I do miss you very much.

Love,

Elizabeth

or Bess

(That’s what the Judge calls me. He says I look a bit like Queen Elizabeth the First of England and her nickname was ‘Bess’. I kind of like it.)

Elizabeth folded the letter carefully and put it away in her backpack. She rubbed her eyes and tucked her hair behind her ears. She really would have to do something about her hair before school started. It was getting so long that it looked scraggly unless she washed it every day.

Getting to her feet, she stretched. Although it would be a long time before it got dark, the days were getting shorter and the shadows lengthened in the graveyard earlier and earlier. There was always a chill in the air in the evenings, no matter how hot the day had been, and lately the early mornings were foggy, hinting of fall.

She shrugged her shoulders into the straps of her backpack and bent to give the old headstone a pat. It was a ritual with her; she gave the anonymous marker a friendly pat whenever she arrived at her favourite spot in the graveyard, and also when she left. As she bent over, her pen fell out of the pocket of her pack and rolled across the grass to the edge of the marker. She knelt to pick it up and as she did, a glint caught her eye. It was just a momentary flash of something shiny in the long grass at the foot of the headstone. She brushed aside the grass and there, half buried in roots and dirt, was a small gold ring.

She picked it up and rubbed away the dirt. It was a small ring, a woman’s or a child’s. A small red stone was set in the centre, flush with the ring itself, and an intricate pattern of engraving spread from the stone across the top of the ring. Something had been engraved on the inside of it, but the letters were too worn to read.

Well, she thought. It’s my lucky day. I wonder if it’s real gold? She slipped the ring onto the little finger of her left hand. It fit as if it had been made for her.

It’s a pretty thing. I guess I should check at the office, though, to see if anyone’s reported losing it. I hope no one has. I’d like to keep it.

Idly, she turned the ring around on her finger, wondering about the person it had belonged to and how it had come to be nestled in the grass at the head of an old grave in Barkerville.

Suddenly, her vision blurred. The air around her became hazy, as if a misty curtain had been drawn in front of the trees. She felt weak. Her head ached behind her eyes and, for a moment, she thought that she was going to be sick to her stomach.

She eased herself down onto the grass beside the grave. I’d better sit down for a while. I must be catching the flu or something.

Carefully, she put her head between her knees, a trick that she knew was good for getting rid of dizziness. She sat that way for several minutes, then, feeling better, she slowly raised her head.

The wooded graveyard had vanished and in its place was an open field studded with tree stumps and scrub grass. The gravestones which had been so numerous were now thinned to a handful, and her special grave, the one she had been sitting beside, was gone.

Elizabeth blinked her eyes, holding them shut for a few seconds. When she opened them the scene remained the same. Puzzled, and slightly frightened, she got to her feet and made her way to one of the nearest tombstones.

The wooden marker was new, the paint unweathered and the wood unsilvered by time. The grave itself was raised and covered with only a thin growth of grass and weeds, bare earth showing quite clearly in spots. Elizabeth was able to read the epitaph clearly:

IN MEMORY

OF

CHARTRES BREW

BORN AT CORFSIN

COUNTY CLARE, IRELAND

31 OF DEC. 1815

DIED AT RICHFIELD

31 OF MAY, 1870

GOLD COMMISSIONER

AND COUNTY COURT JUDGE

Elizabeth knew the grave and knew of Chartres Brew. He had been a friend of the real Judge Begbie. The presence of a familiar grave reassured her slightly.

The rest of his epitaph had been written by Judge Begbie himself. She had memorized it just last week. Slowly, she read the rest out loud: “A man imperturbable in courage and temper, endowed with a great and varied administrative capacity. A most ready wit, a most pure integrity.”

The words were the same. But why was the marker so new looking? Why did the grave look fresh instead of sunken and overgrown the way she had seen it last?

Frightened now, Elizabeth ran from grave to grave, checking for familiar ones. Some markers were weathered, but not badly so. Others seemed recent — one looked as if it had been dug only days ago and was still covered with dried wildflowers. Some graves that should have been there were missing.

She looked for her special place, hoping for more reassurance. The big pine was gone and where it should have been stood a tiny seedling, no more than a foot high. The trees that had shaded the graveyard were also gone and, as she looked around her she realized that both above and below her the hills had been stripped of trees.

Slowly, she sat down and tried to think. What had happened? She had found the ring. Then she’d put it on her finger and . . . . Perhaps if she took it off and started again this nightmare would go away. She pulled the ring from her finger and looked around. Everything remained the same: the bare hills, the smaller, newer-looking graveyard.

Frantically, she shoved the ring back onto her finger. Stupid thing, she thought. Everything was normal until I found it. If I could put it back . . . . But the grave where she had found the ring was not there, and she had no way of knowing exactly where to put the ring.

Unconsciously, she rubbed her hands together, clenching and twisting them the way her mother did when she was upset. Tears began to smart behind her eyes, and she chewed nervously on her bottom lip. Take it easy, she told herself. You’re probably asleep, having a bad dream. You’ll wake up soon and stretch and yawn, pick up your backpack and go home.

She rubbed her hands again, pulling and twisting her fingers. The ring sat comfortably on the little finger of her left hand. She held it with the fingers of her right hand, and in her anxiety began to turn it.

Before the ring had completed one revolution, weakness and nausea gripped her again, and the strange mist gathered and swelled before her. Gasping, she closed her eyes. When the sick feeling had gone, she cautiously opened them again. To her relief, the world was once again the safe, familiar place that she knew. The large pine towered above her once more, her favourite grave was there in its proper place, and the tall trees that sheltered the graveyard whispered softly in the afternoon breeze.

Shakily, Elizabeth got to her feet and made her way to Chartres Brew’s grave. The weathered marker leaned slightly to one side, its epitaph worn and hard to read. There was no sign of freshly dug earth and no newly erected grave markers could be seen anywhere in the cemetery.

She took a deep breath and picked up her backpack. Carrying it under one arm she made her way out of the graveyard and down the long winding trail that led to the Barkerville parking lot. She walked faster than she usually did, eager to get away from the graveyard and the frightening experience that she had undergone there.

When she reached her bike she unchained it, then paused for a moment before climbing on and starting home. Something happened to me, she thought. Something very strange happened and I’m not sure what it was. Maybe I fell asleep. Maybe I’m coming down with something. Maybe I was daydreaming again and the dreams just got too real. Anyway, I’m sure it was all in my head and not real at all. And it won’t happen again, so I might as well stop worrying about it.

Feeling a bit better, she put her arms through the straps of her backpack and reached for the handlebars of her bike. Then she saw, snugly encircling the little finger of her left hand, the small gold ring with the red stone.