Margaret Hastings-James

CHAPTER 1

The only thing that kept Mary from turning back to the service counter for a refund was Ryan downing his third beer of the morning in the airport bar. People dressed in Bermuda shorts stared at her white Kodiaks as she clumped past. The manufacturer claimed that the heavy boots would keep her feet warm in arctic temperatures up to minus forty degrees Celsius. Too bad it was late August in Montreal. Her socks felt like sponges and her hair clung to her neck. She was already beginning to regret having taken the job. The words of the school board recruiter came back to her…

     “If you’re going to the North to get away from your problems, don’t.” The worn-looking woman had walked to the edge of the raised platform, her face set and serious. “You’ll be thousands of kilometres from anywhere and if you think the tundra will make your troubles seem small, it won’t. Whatever’s on your mind will be all you have in the vast, white, emptiness of the North. Up there, in the dead of winter, night lasts forever.”

     Mary had shifted uncomfortably and glanced around at the other candidates seated in the Blue Lagoon Conference Room at Montreal’s Reefer Hotel. But running away couldn’t really be considered a problem, could it? After all, she wasn’t taking her problem with her; she was leaving it behind. She’d welcome the vast, white, emptiness with open arms. Anything had to be better than where she was coming from.

     Mary had walked into the hotel lobby and sat in one of the cream-coloured armchairs. She lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the towering palm trees huddled under a glass dome covered in April snow. What had she been thinking applying for a job in Northern Quebec? Sure, she liked adventure as much as the next person – hadn’t she upped stakes every three years, teaching adults in Vancouver, kids in Toronto, and immigrants in Montreal, changing her life completely every time? But in a way those moves had been easy. She knew how to survive the loneliness of the first six months, to work the city.

     But this time it would be different. She might as well be moving to another planet. Friends had laughed at the idea of her living above the tree line, north of sixty. She didn’t even like the cold and had been known to wear thick socks to bed in the summer. And how would she survive without Vivian at Hair Heaven and Frieda at Faces? And what about Saturday morning bagels from Atwater Market? What about Sunday brunches at Peel Pub?

     But for Mary the main attraction of the North was what wasn’t there, especially on a Saturday morning. There would be no Ryan, no guys passed out on the couch, no tripping over small hills of beer cans and overflowing ashtrays on the way to the bathroom, no blasts of Led Zeppelin while she was buttering her bagel…

So, Mary had signed the contract.

Now near the end of August, she trudged to the departure gate trailing her parka on the ground. It was the ugliest, heaviest coat she’d ever owned. But after supporting Ryan for two years on student loans and part-time teaching jobs, she’d had to walk past the designer feather-weight parkas. The cheapest were the ones scientists and outdoor workers wore with silver reflecting tape and big clear plastic name tag holders sewn all over them.

     When she finally reached gate fourteen thousand and something in the outreaches of Dorval airport there were already several groups of what were obviously returning teachers lounging against duffel bags on the floor in the middle of the departure lounge. At ease with themselves, at ease with the world, they knew where they were going. And more importantly, they knew what was waiting for them when they got there.

     Mary sat in a hard plastic chair on the sidelines with the other greenhorns clutching their new knapsacks and parkas. She envied the groups on centre stage their feeling of confidence, of being in the know…   

     “Hi.”

     Mary jumped.

     “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. You’re Mary, right? We met at the second round of interviews. I’m Francine, remember?” 

     How could she forget? Five months earlier, they’d bitten their nails together in the hotel lobby waiting for the final round of interviews. Mary was a little surprised to see Francine had decided to go North. She looked as if she should have been on a stage at the Met singing opera. Her dark eyes were rimmed with black kohl and a vibrant coloured scarf held back her waist-length jet-black hair. She wore several layers of skirts with a peasant shirt, vest, and more scarves. Silver and elephant-hair bangles decorated both wrists. No one was likely to forget Francine.

“Sure, I remember you. I see you made it,” Mary said.

“Yup, I’m teaching the grade 7 English section in Nuvuk. And you?” She dropped her stuff on the floor and sat down next to Mary.

     “Secondary, English. Nuvuk.”

     “No way! That’s great. We’ll be together. Have you met anyone else who’s going there?”

     “Nope.” Mary shook her head. “I was just looking at all these people and wondering who I’d be spending the next year with.”

     They both glanced around the room.

“Think he might be with us?” Mary nodded to a tall dark-haired demi-god at the centre of one of the in-groups.

     “We should be so lucky,” Francine said.

     “You never know…”

     She shook her head. “I know my luck and he’ll be posted at the other end of Hudson Bay, or he’s already got a girlfriend.”

     “Or he’s gay.”

     “I bet you’re right.” She picked up Mary’s pack of cigarettes and smelled it. “He’s too cute to be straight.”

     “Help yourself if you want one.” 

     “Thanks, but I just quit.”

     “Oh, sorry.” Mary reached for the ashtray.

     “Don’t put that out on my account. Second-hand smoke is almost as good as the real thing. So, are you leaving anyone special behind?”

     “No… Well, sort of… I don’t know.”

     “Say no more – been there, done that…”

     They smiled at each other.

     It was another half-hour before a flight attendant came and led them outside and across the tarmac to a small, fat silver plane. Half of the seats had been taken out to make room for cargo. A temporary wall hosted crates, boxes and luggage bundled together in large nylon nets.

     As life as they knew it fell further and further behind, Francine rambled on about her summer vacation in a wilderness camp. Mary found it hard to imagine Francine roughing it, although she was probably in better shape than Mary who had joined gyms but usually never made it past the sauna or tanning room. She had always envied other people who were dedicated to going to the gym regularly but no matter how hard she tried it just wasn’t for her.

     “There were about ten of us. Mostly couples. Why is it always couples? It’s like I’m a magnet for them. Anyway, the guide was kind of cute. He must have been about twenty-three or twenty-four. A French guy built like you wouldn’t believe. He really knew how to handle…”

     Mary glanced at her watch. They’d been in the air for an hour. She wondered if Ryan was still in the bar or if he’d become another drunk driving statistic on the evening news?

     “…rafting?”

     “What?”

     “Have you ever done any white water?”

     “Does the water slide at Adventure Land count?”

Mary had spent an exhausting summer teaching intensive English to hormonally challenged teenagers. In the desperate hope of cooling them off, she’d taken them to a water park one afternoon. 

     She wondered if it was too soon to order another Screwdriver from the flight attendant. Maybe she’d give Ryan’s mother a call from the next stop. No, she’d promised herself to quit worrying. Besides, she still hadn’t got past the irritation of living with Ryan the final weeks before leaving. Ever since she’d told him she was going up North, he’d been unbearable. Hour after hour he sat in front of the CD player feeding in disc after disc, smoking and drinking – and even worse – sighing.

     “Hey, Mary.” Francine tapped her arm.

     “Sorry, what did you say?”

     “Your hair. Didn’t it use to be browner and shorter?”

     How had they gone from rafting to hair?

     “Yeah, I did a red henna and decided to grow it out. I think longer hair will probably be easier to take care of in the North.”

     It had been Ryan who’d done the henna. She’d miss that about him. He’d always been good at taking care of her – washing, ironing, cooking. He would have made a great wife, in the fifties.

     “Henna. God, it’s been years. Maybe I’ll do mine red too. Think it’s too soon to order another drink?”

     Three hours out of Montreal, they stopped in Val d’Or. Mary went to the airport washroom and when she came out Francine waved her over.

     “These guys are going to Nuvuk too. This is Matt, Saura and Scoville – all first year same as us. This is Mary, secondary English.”

     “Hi.” Matt took her hand in a bear-like grip. “I’m teaching Phys. Ed. and science.”

     He was built like a football player, solid. Not more than twenty-three or twenty-four, he had an open, kind face, soft brown eyes, and shaggy hair. He radiated good-natured energy, sort of like a Lab puppy.

     “Primary English.” Saura waved her hand and smiled.

     She was dark-skinned with huge brown eyes and bobbed black hair. Under five feet, she seemed fragile and even more at odds with her surroundings than Mary felt. It was like finding an orchid in the middle of the tundra.

     Scoville introduced himself in a soft Quebec accent, “Bonjour. Secondary French.” 

     His wild carrot-coloured hair was thin and stood on end as if he’d been through a wind tunnel. His light blue eyes were magnified by round, wire-rimmed glasses. Average height, he looked as if he was closely related to the Pillsbury doughboy, as if he had never seen the sun or a piece of gym equipment in his entire life.

     They sat at the small bar in the centre of the airport waiting for cargo to be unloaded. Mary smoked while the others talked. These were the people who would become, who had already become her world.

     “So, where you from, Scoville?” Francine asked in English.

     He answered in French. “You wouldn’t know the place; it’s a small farming community outside of Rimouski.” His voice was slow and lazy, a nice combination with the rich accent.

     “You lived on a farm?”

     He nodded.

     “How did you end up here?”

     “I don’t know.” He continued in French despite Francine asking questions in English. “I guess I was tired of small-town life. Always the same things going on, and the school where I taught wasn’t that great. I guess I just wanted a change.”

     “But to a small town of 300 in the North? Don’t most people move from the farm to the city and make it big?”

     He shrugged. “I’ve always been fascinated by the North. Why are you going?”

     “Me?” Francine adjusted the scarf at her neck. “Adventure, dahling. The final frontier and all that. I love camping and hiking. Also, I’m hoping that Inuit kids are going to be much more interesting than the kids I’ve been teaching down south.”

     “I know what you mean.” Matt said. “My kids were so privileged they expected everything just handed to them. Anyway, the Inuit kids can’t be worse than what I’m used to. Maybe, on the weekends, we can all do some hunting and winter camping together.”

     “I want to try ice fishing,” Francine said.

     Francine and Matt talked northern camping and fishing while Saura hung on every word. Scoville gazed off into the distance. Mary smoked and watched.

She wondered what her class would be like. What would the people be like who had survived this place? The people they were about to live with had winter camped and fished because they had to. They had to be strong and determined which meant that the students probably would be too.

Saura’s musical laughter brought Mary and Scoville back to the group. Scoville blushed when he looked at Saura. It was a shame Francine had been side tracked in her why-are-you-here enquiry. Of all the people at the table, Saura seemed the least likely candidate for the North.