Young men in the now-outdated uniforms of the Great War were the most frequent subjects; also brides and grooms. Then there were graduation portraits, First Communions, solemn family groups, infants in christening gear, girls in formal gowns, children in party outfits, cats and dogs. There was the occasional eccentric pet-a tortoise, a macaw-and, infrequently, a baby in a coffin, waxen-faced, surrounded by ruffles.
The colours never came out clear, the way they would on a piece of white paper: there was a misty look to them, as if they were seen through cheesecloth. They didn't make the people seem more real; rather they became ultra-reaclass="underline" citizens of an odd half-country, lurid yet muted, where realism was beside the point.
Laura told me what she was doing vis-a-vis Elwood Murray; she also told Reenie. I expected a protest, an uproar; I expected Reenie to say that Laura was lowering herself, or acting in a tawdry, compromising fashion. Who could tell what might go on in a darkroom, with a young girl and a man and the lights off? But Reenie took the view that it wasn't as if Elwood was paying Laura to work for him: rather he was teaching her, and that was quite different. It put him on a level with the hired help. As for Laura being in a darkroom with him, no one would think any harm of it, because Elwood was such a pansy. I suspect Reenie was secretly relieved to have Laura showing an interest in something other than God.
Laura certainly showed an interest, but as usual she went overboard. She nicked some of Elwood's hand-tinting materials and brought them home with her. I found this out by accident: I was in the library, dipping into the books at random, when I noticed the framed photographs of Grandfather Benjamin, each with a different prime minister. Sir John Sparrow Thompson's face was now a delicate mauve, Sir Mackenzie Bowell's a bilious green, Sir Charles Tupper's a pale orange. Grandfather Benjamin's beard and whiskers had been done in light crimson.
That evening I caught her in the act. There on her dressing table were the little tubes, the tiny brushes. Also the formal portrait of Laura and me in our velvet dresses and Mary Janes. Laura had removed the print from its frame, and was tinting me a light blue. "Laura," I said, "what in heaven's name are you up to? Why did you colour those pictures? The ones in the library. Father will be livid."
"I was just practising," said Laura. "Anyway, those men needed some enhancing. I think they look better."
"They look bizarre," I said. "Or very ill. Nobody's face is green! Or mauve."
Laura was unperturbed. "It's the colours of their souls," she said. "It's the colours theyought to have been."
"You'll get in big trouble! They'll know who did it."
"Nobody everlooks at those," she said. "Nobodycares."
"Well, you'd better not lay a finger on Grandmother Adelia," I said. "Nor the dead uncles! Father would have your hide!"
"I wanted to do them in gold, to show they're in glory," she said. "But there isn't any gold. The uncles, not Grandmother. I'd do her a steel grey."
"Don't you dare! Father doesn't believe in glory. And you'd better take those paints back before you're accused of theft."
"I haven't used much," said Laura. "Anyway, I brought Elwood a jar of jam. It's a fair trade."
"Reenie's jam, I suppose. "Out of the cold cellar-did you ask her? She counts that jam, you know." I picked up the photograph of the two of us. "Why am I blue?"
"Because you're asleep," said Laura.
The tinting materials weren't the only things she nicked. One of Laura's jobs was filing. Elwood liked his office kept very neatly, and his darkroom as well. His negatives were placed in glassine envelopes, filed according to the date on which they'd been taken, so it was easy for Laura to locate the negative of the picnic shot. She made two black-and-white prints of it, one day when Elwood had gone out and she had the run of the place to herself. She didn't tell anybody about this, not even me-not until later. After she'd made the prints, she slipped the negative into her handbag and took it home with her. She did not consider it stealing: Elwood had stolen the picture in the first place by not asking permission of us, and she was only taking away from him something that had never really belonged to him anyway.
After she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do, Laura stopped going to Elwood Murray's office. She gave him no reason, and no warning. I felt this was clumsy of her, and indeed it was, because Elwood felt slighted. He tried to find out from Reenie if Laura was ill, but all Reenie would say was that Laura must have changed her mind about photography. She was full of ideas, that girl; she always had some bee in her bonnet, and now she must have a different one.
This aroused Elwood's curiosity. He began to keep an eye on Laura, above and beyond his usual nosiness. I wouldn't call it spying exactly-it wasn't as if he lurked behind bushes. He just noticed her more. (He hadn't found out about the purloined negative yet, however. It didn't occur to him that Laura might have had an ulterior motive in seeking him out. Laura had such a direct gaze, such blankly open eyes, such a pure, rounded forehead, that few ever suspected her of duplicity.)
At first Elwood found nothing much to notice. Laura was to be observed walking along the main street, making her way to church on Sunday mornings, where she taught Sunday school to the five-year-olds. On three other mornings of the week, she helped out at the United Church soup kitchen, which had been set up beside the train station. Its mission was to dish out bowls of cabbagy soup to the hungry, dirty men and boys who were riding the rails: a worthy effort, but one that was not viewed with approval by everyone in town. Some felt these men were seditious conspirators, or worse, Communists; others, that there should be no free meals, because they themselves had to work for every mouthful. Shouts of "Get a job!" were heard. (The insults were by no means one way, though the ones from the itinerant men were more muted. Of course they resented Laura and all the churchy do-gooders like her. Of course they had ways of letting their feelings be known. A joke, a sneer, a jostle, a sullen leer. There is nothing more onerous than enforced gratitude.)
The local police stood by to make sure that these men did not get any smart ideas into their heads, such as remaining in Port Ticonderoga. They were to be shuffled along, moved elsewhere. But they weren't allowed to hop the boxcars right in the train station, because the railway company wouldn't put up with that. There were scuffles and fist fights, and-as Elwood Murray put it, in print-nightsticks were freely employed.
So these men would trudge along the railway tracks and try to hop further down the line, but that was more difficult because by then the trains would have gathered speed. There were several accidents, and one death-a boy who couldn't have been more than sixteen fell under the wheels and was virtually cut in two. (Laura locked herself in her room for three days after that, and would eat nothing: she'd served a bowl of soup to this boy.) Elwood Murray wrote an editorial in which he said that the mishap was regrettable but not the fault of the railway, and certainly not that of the town: if you took foolhardy risks, what could you expect?
Laura begged bones from Reenie, for the church soup pot. Reenie said she was not made of bones; bones did not grow on trees. She needed most of the bones for herself-for Avilion, for us. She said a penny saved was a penny earned, and didn't Laura see that during these hard times Father needed all the pennies he could get? But she couldn't ever resist Laura for long, and a bone or two or three would be forthcoming. Laura didn't want to touch the bones, or even see them-she was squeamish that way-so Reenie would wrap them up for her. "There you are. Those bums will eat us out of house and home," she would sigh. "I've put in an onion." She didn't think Laura should be working at the soup kitchen-it was too rough for a young girl like her.
"It's wrong to call them bums," said Laura. "Everyone turns them away. They only want work. All they want is a job."