(Continued from previous post: Copyright Dorothy Nixon 2011)
And then an idea flew into her head.
Maybe she could find someone downtown who could help her with the strange, difficult poem. Now that would be resourceful. But who did she know, in town, who spoke French? Local shopkeepers, mostly.
Mr. Belanger, the clerk at Hudon’s dry goods store, for one.
But Monsieur Belanger was prone to poke fun at her, or even pepper her with silly questions abut her father. Last month he had asked Flora if ‘his friend’ Monsieur Laurier had given her father his job back with the railway.
Monsieur Laurier! As if her father knew the Prime Minister personally!
And there was Miss Goyette, the milliner or ‘modiste’ as she described herself in flowery pink lettering on her shop window.
Miss Goyette, who was about sister Edith’s age, 26 or 27, was tall and pretty, and she worked in her shop. She was a very clever saleswoman, too. She often tricked Flora into purchasing more trim for her hat than she intended to. Well, each and every time this happened.
Miss Goyette was disarmingly friendly, and spoke perfect English, and she liked to chat while working so you chatted back and before long you were buying 2 feet of two-sided satin ribbon instead of 6 inches of one-sided, on credit, and then at the end of the month you had to come up with the money, somehow.
In her defence, Miss Goyette assumed Flora’s family had plenty of spare cash to lay out on flowers and sprays and sprigs and other fashionable frippery. She assumed this because the Nicholsons lived in the toniest part of Richmond, near College Street.
So Miss Goyette assumed, even, that the Nicholsons owned a motorcar, like most of their neighbours. “If you are going to take rides in a fancy automobile (she used the French word for motor) you will ‘ave to be dressed ‘a la mode’.”
If Miss Goyette only knew the truth. That the Nicholsons had no motor and little chance of ever getting one. A motor cost as much as a house, as much as Tighsolas. Imagine. Flora’s family had not enough cash coming in to pay the interest on the mortgage of Tighsolas, 90 dollars a year.
So, lately, Flora found herself visiting the milliner’s when the new apprentice, a Miss Gouin, about her own age, was behind the counter. Miss Gouin was shy and she spoke only halting English. She let Flora poke around in the baskets without bothering her. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, after all, to seek out help from a shopkeeper.
Then Flora pictured in her mind’s eye the oral French exam the next day. Just five boys and 3 girls in Academy III were sitting for final exams this year.
There were five students in her French class. This Victor Hugo poem had 20 or so lines, that meant she’d likely be called upon to recite 4 or more lines. But which ones?
She found the prospect of faltering in front of her classmates, once again, frightening.
Well, she wouldn’t be made a fool of this time. She was decided. She’d go visit Miss Goyette. Even if it cost her a few extra pennies for some grebe feathers and wings for her spring bonnet. Hats were bigger than ever this season, so the more trim the better.
She put down her book on the ground and pushed herself up and out of the rocker with her skinny chicken arms.
Her spring cape hung open around her. She fastened a few chest-level buttons, bent down and picked up the text and tucked it under her left arm and skipped, clickety clack, down the 3 verandah stairs.
But then she wheeled around on the heels of her ‘schoolgirl specials’ and sprinted back up the verandah stairs and opened the front door, poked her head into the tiny vestibule and grabbed a straw hat from the rack, last year’s bonnet, a lumpy shape garlanded with too few all too faded yellow silk buttercups.
And she set out once again, this time with Floss, the Dalmation padding along at her heels. The dog knew the drill. Two 10 minute trips a day downtown to the mail, morning and afternoon. Right at College, left at Bedard, right at Main Street. Towards the river.
Flora, hat and textbook in hand, and Floss, happily unrestrained, tripped down Dufferin, then passed a few elegant hilltop homes on College Street, then turned onto Bedard,for a few hundred feet, then onto Main street, where they strolled past J.C. Sutherland’s Drug Store, where the man sold nerve tonics and cough syrups and cherry phosphate sodas; past A J Hudon’s, “the store of satisfaction” where they were advertising 200 new boys suits in stock; past McMorine’s, where there was a special on men’s half hose, silk, and then McRae Brothers, Pure Food Products, Table Luxuries and Groceries, who were promoting a brand new baking product called Crisco.
Flora noticed that Mr. Wales’s establishment (he was the town tycoon and a good friend of the family’s) had some new material in, Copenhagen mulles, motor suiting for coats and skirts in helio and navy stripe.
(Well, the Nicholsons didn’t have an auto, so she hardly needed that. She borrowed duster when she went out in a motorcar.)
Then Flora found herself in front of Miss Goyette’s, directly across the Street from the Post Office Building.
What should she do first? She stepped from the sidewalk to head toward the Post Office, built high off the street to protect from spring flooding (which thankfully had yet to materialize). An old carthorse hauling firewood was plodding up the street towards her, so, for a moment she just stood still, right there, undecided. She turned around to face the millinery shop.
She could not see the shop through the window display, which showcased a giant purple felt shape overflowing with bright yellow fluff balls that were supposed to be newly-hatched chicks. Imagine wearing a chicken brooder on your head, Flora thought.
She walked up to the window for a closer look, and leaned up against the pane, shading her eyes with her hand.
The apprentice, Miss Gouin, who like Flora was very short, was behind the counter, reaching up with some difficulty for something shadowy on a high storage shelf. Unlike Flora, Miss Gouin had a fashionable full-figure with tiny waist, which this stretching exercise was showing off to fine effect, and unaware that she was being watched, the shopgirl re-adjusted her corset through her apron and blouse, that is, after knocking loose the elusive prize, which was a simple wire hat frame.
Miss Gouin must be alone, Flora realized. So, should she even bother to go in?
But a sign in the window beckoned:
“Come in to see our Exquisite Easter Millinery. The latest 1911 Paris Styles.
Some of the most beautiful pattern hats and bonnets ever to be displayed in
Richmond.”
Such an invitation would be hard to resist on any occasion. But here she stood, sad old crumpled hat in hand.
The soft tinkle of the doorbell signalled her entrance, and Miss Gouin glanced up from her wire frame and smiled, and nodded, subtly.
To Flora, the young French woman seemed like a metaphor for Spring in a poetry book, surrounded by baskets brimming with their sumptuous offerings to the Goddess of Beauty: flowers, ribbons, and bows, of all shapes, textures and sizes, with the last of the day’s sun streaming in and setting ablaze a large beige wire panier filled bright orange plumage and purple wings.
Full story at www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf
