Flying Geese Read online

  Dedication

  For the London Friendship Quilters’ Guild

  for their caring and laughter

  Contents

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Glossary

  Make Your Own Flying Geese Coaster

  About the Author

  Books by Barbara Haworth-Attard

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  A main thread in this book is the Flying Geese quilt Margaret is working on. Textile history is an important aspect of history that is often overlooked. Quilts were important, non-written historical records of women’s particular and personal insights. At the end of a long day, a pioneer woman, living in harsh isolation, would arrange patches in eye-pleasing designs. This work offered a break from endless chores, colour in a drab world, and an opportunity to socialize. For many it also offered the only outlet they had for creative expression. Today, the quilting tradition remains strong as patterns are handed down from generation to generation and women, and also many men, continue to stitch their hopes and sorrows and joys into these material labours of love.

  While I have made every effort to present a historically accurate picture of London, Ontario, in 1915, I would ask the reader to remember that this is a work of fiction and the characters are wholly a product of my imagination.

  For more information on quilting and the First World War era, visit my website at:

  www.barbhaworthattard.com

  Chapter 1

  Margaret heard their cry first: a single, flat honk, then others joining, filling the air with sound. She squinted into the late afternoon sun to see geese fly low over the Saskatchewan prairie in an orderly V-formation. Wings beat strong and heads strained southward. Summer was over.

  Every year she and her father would watch the geese arrive in the soft, spring nights and leave in the crisp air of fall. Margaret was comfortable with the geese going, sure in the knowledge they would return. Except this year—this year she was sure of nothing.

  “Margaret Brown! Stop your dreaming and bring in the wash from the line,” her mother ordered through the kitchen window.

  Worry gnawing at her insides, Margaret pulled pegs from the sheets, momentarily wrestling the wind for the billowing cotton. She folded haphazardly before stuffing them into a woven basket. She continued along the clothesline until she came to the quilt airing at the end. Her own Flower Basket quilt. She stopped and stood back to admire its soft yellow, blue, and green hues. Grandma Brown had made it special for her a year ago, finishing it six months before a stroke had carried her away to her final resting place, as Mama called heaven.

  Margaret closed her eyes and buried her head in its colourful folds, hearing her grandmother’s voice. I’m quilting spring for you, Grandgirl. She missed Grandma Brown dreadfully, especially now when everything was so upset. Seeing the elderly woman’s back bent over her wooden quilting frame in the parlour had a way of steadying them all. Was she enjoying her final resting place? Margaret wondered. She’d never actually seen her grandmother rest. She kept busy from dawn to long past dark, working in the garden, canning and preserving, cooking and washing. In her spare moments, out would come scraps of material from her apron pocket and she’d sew. Maybe heaven was doing what you liked best and for Grandma Brown, that was piecing and quilting. She certainly was not resting.

  And what was heaven for herself? Margaret wondered. Perhaps yellow sun on her skin, blue sky above, wind on her cheeks, and her feet carrying her so swiftly the brown prairie grass blurred beneath them. Certainly not hanging the wash.

  With a sigh, Margaret straightened and ran her fingers over the swirling feather stitching on the quilt, feeling the love embedded with the thread—and also a moment’s pride. Some of the stitches in the quilt were her own—Grandma Brown had finally declared Margaret skilled enough to take a place with the women seated around the frame during what was to be her grandmother’s last quilting bee. You come quilt now, Grandgirl. Even stitches, child. Don’t dig in the needle; ply it gently.

  She’d accompanied Grandma Brown to quilting bees since she was very young, sitting many an afternoon within a small house, the roof above her the quilt top stretched taut on its frame; the walls, women’s skirt-clad legs and booted feet. Reluctantly she now pulled the quilt from the line, smelling the freshness of an afternoon outside, and wished once more to be within that safe, small haven.

  Settling the basket on one hip, Margaret moved towards the house. She shivered as the sun hid behind grey clouds gathering on the horizon and the growing darkness stole warmth and light. She recalled another afternoon three weeks ago, the sky clear except for one boiling black thunderhead herded by an unusually warm wind directly to their fields. Watching the cloud from the kitchen, Dad had said a spot of rain would be good for the crop, but suddenly the sky yellowed and wind roared. The drumming on the roof deafened them as hailstones the size of eggs fell on the house and fields. She’d watched her father’s expression become grimmer with each passing minute, and though the storm rapidly took its leave, the bleakness on his face had not.

  Margaret kept her eyes on the dirt path to the porch steps, unable to look upon the battered ruins of their grain. The neighbours had come shortly after, shaking their heads over the whims of nature and God that left only the Brown farm damaged. Everyone else had a bumper crop this harvest and, due to the war which had caused a shortage of wheat in Europe, prices were at an all time high. All the families around them had more money than they knew what to do with—all except the Browns. Margaret passed through the porch and into the kitchen.

  “Did you shake those sheets well and smooth the wrinkles out?” Mrs. Brown asked.

  “Yes, Mama,” Margaret replied, hoping she had. She couldn’t remember, she’d been so caught up in her own misery.

  “You can help Evie with the vegetables then.” Her mother settled down in a chair and picked up a pair of overalls and a needle and thread.

  Margaret crossed to the work table where her older sister stood peeling potatoes. Potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and supper. That and carrots and squash, the only vegetables left in Mama’s garden. She looked at them with distaste, but said nothing. Mama’s hand was quick to reach out and strike these days, and they were all learning fast to hold their tongues.

  Evie smiled at her, well aware of her thoughts. Margaret picked up a knife, then stole a look at her mother. Head bent, her needle winked silver in and out of George’s overalls. More patches than pants, Margaret thought, but there was no money for clothes. Hadn’t been any since the last decent harvest three years ago.

  “You’re taking half the potato with the peel,” Evie scolded. “Be careful.”

  “I was just taking out an eye,” Margaret protested.

  Her mother folded the mended pants, stood, and groaned, arching her back until Margaret could see the small bulge of the new baby under her dress. That would make seven children altogether: her brothers, Edward, seventeen, and George, nearly eleven, in the fields with Dad, and the three-year-old twins, Timothy and Taylor, blessedly asleep for once; her sister Evie, fourteen; and Margaret, turned twelve last week.

  She watched appreh
ensively as her mother pulled a sheet from the basket and shook it out, clicking her tongue in annoyance at the deep creases. Mrs. Brown glanced sharply at Margaret, eyes blazing a moment, then quickly dulling. “The hem’s come down on this one,” she said wearily. “You could mend it before supper.”

  Margaret nodded and wiped her hands on a towel. She rummaged through the sewing basket for needle and thread, seated herself, and began to hem neatly.

  “I will say,” her mother remarked, peering over Margaret’s shoulder, “your stitches are tidy.”

  Margaret felt pride at her mother’s words, which immediately faded as Mama continued. “They’re the only thing tidy about you. How you get in such a state between breakfast and supper is beyond me.”

  Conscious of the unruly strands of yellow hair escaping from her braid, Margaret quickly shifted the sheet on her lap to hide the long streak of black grease left on her skirt from helping Edward oil the wagon wheels before he’d gone to town. He was patient like that, Edward was. Showing her how things went together and worked. Maybe that was why she liked piecing, too. Liked the way the patches went together so well. She glanced up to see Mama’s blue eyes on her, prairie sky eyes her dad called them, reborn in Margaret’s face. Her mother raised her eyebrows and Margaret knew she’d seen the stain, but was letting it go this time. That worried her more than if Mama had slapped her for her carelessness.

  All of a sudden, Mrs. Brown reached out and gently tucked a curl behind Margaret’s ear. “You’ll lose your sight sewing with that hair in your eyes,” she said.

  Margaret studied her mother’s face, anxiously noting the thin cheeks and purple smudges under her eyes. She’d heard her parents talking late the night before as they often did now and had crept from her bed to sit at the top of the stairs to listen.

  It was a well-worn discussion, turned over and inside out: the hail storm, Dad’s accident, the lack of harvest, the lack of money, the lack of food. Except, a month ago, new words had been added. Words that scared Margaret.

  “Harold says we should come to Ontario,” Mama said. Mother’s brother, Uncle Harold, she meant. “You can’t work the farm with your back the way it is. He says we could stay with him and Dot until we get settled.”

  “I don’t take charity from another man,” her father replied.

  “Just like you won’t take the help offered by the other farmers. You can’t leave all the work to Edward and George. They can’t do it. You should look to your pride,” Mama snapped angrily. Then, after a moment, “Harold says you could get a job.”

  “What kind of job?” Dad asked. “I don’t know anything but farming.”

  “He said you could get a job in a store or an office. Something where your bad back won’t matter.”

  Dad hhmmphed at that. “There’s nothing wrong with the farm. We’ll make a living from it.”

  “How?” Mama said flatly. “The doctor says you’ll never be able to lift again. The boys can’t do it by themselves, and we can’t afford to hire a man.”

  They were silent so long Margaret had crawled back into bed and curled up under her quilt next to Evie.

  She sat now, needle unmoving between thumb and forefinger as she remembered Dad’s accident. A year September it had been, while bringing in the last of the harvest. It had been a poor one, as had been the year’s before, with prices so low Dad had grumbled it wasn’t even worth hauling to the grain elevators. She’d been watching as Edward backed up the wagon piled high with hay, the bale rising to the hay mow and a gust of wind coming from nowhere, swinging it wide. Dad, standing in the hay-mow window, leaned forward to grab it and suddenly toppled over, falling heavily on his back in the dirt. Two weeks in hospital, six months bedridden, five months hobbling about, and a final doctor’s pronouncement that the back was as good as it would ever be. Not good enough to farm.

  “Some geese flew over,” she said suddenly, more to keep her thoughts at bay than to tell Evie and her mother. “Leaving for the winter, but I guess they’ll be back come spring.” But will I be here to see them? She wanted to ask that question so badly it hurt, but was just as badly scared to hear the answer, so she said nothing. Perhaps silence would make them forget Ontario.

  Margaret held the sheet to the window to catch the fast-fading light and studied the hem. A satisfied smile played about her lips. She had done a nice mending job. She liked sewing: enjoyed the feel of material beneath her fingers, rough or smooth, enjoyed the rhythm of the needle going in and out. It settled her mind somehow. She and her best friend, Catherine, had made patchwork quilts for their dolls this past summer from scraps Catherine’s mother gave them. As always, she had been fascinated with the way the small pieces were cleverly sewn together in a larger pattern. She took after her Grandma Brown that way, Mama said, always playing with bits of material.

  Voices in the yard warned of the arrival of her father and George for supper.

  “They’re in early. Set the table,” Mama called from the bedroom where she was coaxing Timothy and Taylor to use the chamber pot. “And . . .” She paused, considering. “It’s getting dull. Light a lamp. Just one, mind.”

  Margaret hurried to set dishes on the table. Lifting a round lid off the stove, she put in a piece of straw, waited until it flamed, then carried it to the lamp’s wick. Just one. Mama was being careful with most things these days. Waste not, want not. The door to the kitchen opened and her father walked in with his stiff gait, legacy of the fall. George followed, carrying a pail of milk that he set carefully down by the indoor pump.

  Margaret put a plate of pork on the table, noticing how her sister had sliced it thinly and spread it out to look like more. She placed a loaf of brown bread and a knife by her father’s plate and butter, a luxury they enjoyed as her mother insisted they keep a cow for milk for the twins. A steaming bowl of the ever-present potatoes was set at the opposite end. Shooing Timothy and Taylor from the bedroom, Mrs. Brown rushed to and from the stove. Margaret plopped Timothy on his chair at the table, knowing his twin, Taylor, would follow. That was the way with twins, Margaret had long ago decided; one led, the other followed. Who did what they somehow sorted out between themselves.

  From outside she heard the rattle of wagon wheels over the rutted lane and Edward’s voice halting the horses. A few minutes later the porch door slammed as he came in. Margaret slid into her chair, her eyes on the red flush staining her older brother’s cheeks. Just the wind giving him high colour, she assured herself, but her stomach twisted suddenly, like it did when a storm was brewing. If you want to know the weather, Dad often joked, ask after Margaret’s stomach.

  “I got the mail in town.” Edward dropped a handful of letters by his father’s plate before dragging out a chair and flopping into it. He shot a quick glance at the table, then uttered a dismayed, “Potatoes.”

  Margaret bent her head and covered a small smile.

  “It’s good, filling food,” Mrs. Brown scolded. “You should be happy to be eating at all. You didn’t wash,” she reminded him.

  Edward pumped water into a basin and splashed it over his face, neck, and hands. He grabbed a towel, mopped up the drops, and threw it carelessly on a chair. Like she would do, Margaret thought. Evie would have folded it neatly. In fact, everything about Evie was neat, from her small feet, tidy brown hair, and spotless apron to the way she peeled potatoes.

  Crossing back to his chair, he grabbed one of Margaret’s braids and gave it a sharp tug, grinning when he caught her eye. He was surely excited about something.

  Mr. Brown tore open an envelope and pulled out a letter, face clouding over as he read the contents. “Thieves! The lot of them. Out to get a man’s last penny!” he exploded.

  “Martin,” Mrs. Brown chided gently. “We’re having supper. Can’t that wait?”

  Absently, Margaret’s father nodded, threw down the letter, scooped potatoes from a bowl, and speared a piece of meat.

  “There was a rally at the Agriculture offices today,” Edward began. �
�For the war effort.”

  Timothy began to wail, tossing his carrots to the floor. Margaret impatiently shushed him and scrambled on the kitchen floor to pick up the vegetables, alert to the careful note in Edward’s voice. Something important coming, she knew.

  “A man all the way from Ottawa was talking. A doctor and a reverend both,” Edward marvelled. “I didn’t catch his name. He said every Canadian, every man, woman, and child, must have a part in the struggle for freedom from oppression.” Edward’s voice took on the man’s sombre tones.

  George watched him avidly, though Margaret noticed it didn’t interrupt his fork going up and down from plate to mouth.

  “More war talk,” Mrs. Brown said, voice taut. “It’s over there, in Europe, it doesn’t affect us.”

  “But it does, Mama,” Edward protested. “We’re part of the British Empire and all Canada’s young manhood must answer the call to fight.”

  Repeating the man again, Margaret guessed. Edward didn’t know words like that. Like herself, he hadn’t been the best student at their tiny school. Evie was the scholar in the family.

  “Martin, the blessing.” Mrs. Brown bowed her head but not before Margaret saw the worry in her eyes. Mama felt something bad coming, too.

  Edward continued. “He said we must struggle for liberty and righteousness to prevail so Germany does not triumph.” Silence. Then, “I joined up, Mama. I signed my attestation papers this afternoon. I’m part of the 46th Infantry Battalion. I have to report to Moose Jaw in three days for my training. Christian Ashford joined, too.”

  “Martin! The blessing!” Mrs. Brown repeated, voice higher and tinged with fear.

  Margaret closed her eyes, waited until her father cleared his throat, then opened them to find Edward staring back at her. Excitement struggled with fear in his eyes, but his mouth was set stubborn. No matter what Mama said, he’d be going away to war.

  “Lord,” Mr. Brown began. “Thank you for the abundance . . .” he paused a moment, “. . . of trouble . . .”