the altar where she and Angel knelt and were married.
TESS TELLS ANGEL HER PAST .
HE ABANDONS HER AND GOES TO BRAZIL .
A YEAR PASSES .
SCENE:
The town where Angel’s parents live
.
Now the stepladder on its side becomes the hedge into which Tess shoves her boots before putting on shoes to enter Angel’s town and seek help from his parents.
The stage consisted of six boxes, four feet by six feet wide and eighteen inches high, pushed together, and built by the boys under Michael’s supervision. Parley’s landlady had sewn the curtain from scraps of sheets and counterpanes dyed black. Parley hung them on a long pole suspended from the ceiling, and two boys opened and closed them.
Connie, curious about Hardy (who had died the year before) and even more curious about Parley the bachelor, said to him, “When you saw Thomas Hardy, was he with his wife? Did he
have
a wife?”
“She was sitting right beside him. I didn’t get a good look, I was too far away. That would have been his second wife. His first wife died, and he married someone much younger.”
“Were there children?”
“None he admitted to.”
Interesting.
Like school,
Tess
was bursting with sex, yet leached of it. School oozed prepuberty, puberty, post-puberty, premenopause, menopause. Connie never tired of watching Mary blush. Never stopped looking to see if Parley returned her interest. She felt his eyes follow her instead,a glance she one day returned with a level stare until he clicked his teeth and looked away.
Tess
underlay all other subjects, like lace brought from the old country. Dorset on the Canadian plains, and the plains worked their way into the story.
“Propsy,” Parley cried, “find me a big mirror.”
One of the children, Tula, offered up the fact that her grandfather had a standing mirror in a mahogany frame. Tula took Miss Miller, who enlisted Connie for moral support, to see the old man known as the scholar of Jewel, thanks to his glass-fronted bookcase full of books. Oscar Jacobs.
He was small, nimble, leathery, a reformed alcoholic from Montreal whose farming son had come west to own land and cultivate it scientifically. (This was Tula’s father.) The old man himself had been a peddler of fabrics and threads until his wife opened a dry goods shop in Montreal, which they ran together until she died. He welcomed the two teachers and his granddaughter into his snug house that smelled of peppermint and woodsmoke and introduced them to the pet crow that came and went through a half-open window in the summer kitchen. “Esau, meet Miss Flood, meet Miss Miller.” Then he found a dust cloth and polished the handsome mirror, which happened to be perfect for their needs.
Proudly, Tula opened the glass doors of her grandfather’s bookcase, and Connie smelled the smell she would spend the rest of her life walking into. (I remember beingwith her once in a used bookstore on Queen Street in Toronto when it began to rain. While we waited, we fell into conversation with the owner, a man from Medicine Hat, who told us that the dry summers and winters in the prairies were benevolent towards books, whereas the humid east ruined them with mildew. Connie was looking for illustrated books about birds for a friend of hers who carved wood. At the time I didn’t know who the friend was, but now I know it was Michael.)
Oscar Jacobs drew from his bookcase a copy of
Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible
. “Travellers leave books behind,” he said to Connie and Mary as he opened it. He read out the name in the front. ” ‘Mrs. Harry Stumpf, Wiarton, Ontario.’ “
“I’ve heard of Wiarton,” Connie said. “But not Mrs. Stumpf!”
He put the book away and pulled out another.
Madame Bovary
. “I remember particularly,” he said, “how she changes colour after she poisons herself. Such a beautiful woman.”
And the woman in Mary who wanted to be beautiful said, “What made her beautiful?”
“Her great dark eyes and dark hair. Full
TESS TELLS ANGEL HER PAST .
HE ABANDONS HER AND GOES TO BRAZIL .
A YEAR PASSES .
SCENE:
The town where Angel’s parents live
.
Now the stepladder on its side becomes the hedge into which Tess shoves her boots before putting on shoes to enter Angel’s town and seek help from his parents.
The stage consisted of six boxes, four feet by six feet wide and eighteen inches high, pushed together, and built by the boys under Michael’s supervision. Parley’s landlady had sewn the curtain from scraps of sheets and counterpanes dyed black. Parley hung them on a long pole suspended from the ceiling, and two boys opened and closed them.
Connie, curious about Hardy (who had died the year before) and even more curious about Parley the bachelor, said to him, “When you saw Thomas Hardy, was he with his wife? Did he
have
a wife?”
“She was sitting right beside him. I didn’t get a good look, I was too far away. That would have been his second wife. His first wife died, and he married someone much younger.”
“Were there children?”
“None he admitted to.”
Interesting.
Like school,
Tess
was bursting with sex, yet leached of it. School oozed prepuberty, puberty, post-puberty, premenopause, menopause. Connie never tired of watching Mary blush. Never stopped looking to see if Parley returned her interest. She felt his eyes follow her instead,a glance she one day returned with a level stare until he clicked his teeth and looked away.
Tess
underlay all other subjects, like lace brought from the old country. Dorset on the Canadian plains, and the plains worked their way into the story.
“Propsy,” Parley cried, “find me a big mirror.”
One of the children, Tula, offered up the fact that her grandfather had a standing mirror in a mahogany frame. Tula took Miss Miller, who enlisted Connie for moral support, to see the old man known as the scholar of Jewel, thanks to his glass-fronted bookcase full of books. Oscar Jacobs.
He was small, nimble, leathery, a reformed alcoholic from Montreal whose farming son had come west to own land and cultivate it scientifically. (This was Tula’s father.) The old man himself had been a peddler of fabrics and threads until his wife opened a dry goods shop in Montreal, which they ran together until she died. He welcomed the two teachers and his granddaughter into his snug house that smelled of peppermint and woodsmoke and introduced them to the pet crow that came and went through a half-open window in the summer kitchen. “Esau, meet Miss Flood, meet Miss Miller.” Then he found a dust cloth and polished the handsome mirror, which happened to be perfect for their needs.
Proudly, Tula opened the glass doors of her grandfather’s bookcase, and Connie smelled the smell she would spend the rest of her life walking into. (I remember beingwith her once in a used bookstore on Queen Street in Toronto when it began to rain. While we waited, we fell into conversation with the owner, a man from Medicine Hat, who told us that the dry summers and winters in the prairies were benevolent towards books, whereas the humid east ruined them with mildew. Connie was looking for illustrated books about birds for a friend of hers who carved wood. At the time I didn’t know who the friend was, but now I know it was Michael.)
Oscar Jacobs drew from his bookcase a copy of
Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible
. “Travellers leave books behind,” he said to Connie and Mary as he opened it. He read out the name in the front. ” ‘Mrs. Harry Stumpf, Wiarton, Ontario.’ “
“I’ve heard of Wiarton,” Connie said. “But not Mrs. Stumpf!”
He put the book away and pulled out another.
Madame Bovary
. “I remember particularly,” he said, “how she changes colour after she poisons herself. Such a beautiful woman.”
And the woman in Mary who wanted to be beautiful said, “What made her beautiful?”
“Her great dark eyes and dark hair. Full
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