Icebound

I have lately had the rather strange sensation that Boilertown is becoming a place.

Not merely a camp, I mean. A camp is where one waits. A place has addresses.

The new tenements have managed this rather decisively. There are now doors which belong to particular people, rooms in which one may leave something and reasonably expect to find it again, and windows behind which someone may complain about the weather in comparative privacy:

The boiler itself has even acquired walls.

I had not realized until seeing them how extraordinary it was that the enormous machine upon which nearly every warm thought in Boilertown depends had previously been standing outside as though we had simply forgotten to finish drawing the building around it:

It is easy to look at these things after they have been built and think that Boilertown simply grew them.

It did not.

Every one began as a problem scattered across several people.

Perhaps that is why the old French watchtower interested me so much. It was not terribly useful to stand beneath it and announce that we had discovered a mystery. A mystery is merely a problem which has not yet been introduced to enough people:

And perhaps that is also why I cannot stop thinking about the scavengers. We speak about scavengers very easily, as though the word told us everything worth knowing about the person wearing it. 

Some are dangerous.

Some almost certainly are not.

Some may merely be cold.

If we truly mean to persuade any 'scavengers' to come nearer rather than driving everyone farther into the snow, I suppose we would need:

That last requirement may prove the expensive one.

Looking back over this page, I appear to have done it again. I cannot seem to describe anything without first disassembling it into a list. Nor, apparently, can I resist trying to make the list more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Vivi has certainly noticed. I rather suspect this is how I became the town’s secretary: take enough notes, add enough headings, make enough people laugh at them, and eventually someone mistakes eccentricity for qualification.

Still, I suppose it is the closest thing I know to helping with everything at once.

I cannot build every wall or mend every wire. I can usually work out who ought to be standing beside it. And once several clever people are standing in the correct place, someone ought to write down what they said.

I would blame Boilertown for this habit, except I have the uncomfortable suspicion that it is much older.

Papa could attest to that. Mama, regrettably, could attest rather more thoroughly.

It was perhaps a month before the railroad incident. I was twelve the first time Papa allowed me to assist with what I then thought of as “railway business.”

I had imagined, naturally, that railway business involved locomotives.

There were no locomotives.

There were papers.

An appalling number of papers.

Letters, invoices, schedules, cargo lists, notes from engineers, notes from clerks, notes about other notes, and several documents which appeared to exist chiefly to explain why a previous document had been incorrect.

Papa’s study had surrendered nearly every available surface to them. Railway maps hung behind his desk, his spectacles sat low upon his nose, and a thin haze from his pipe drifted upward whenever he paused to think.

There was a fire going as well, though it was late enough in the spring that even I remember thinking it excessive.

I remember standing beside Papa’s desk for some time before finally asking:

“Where is the railway?”

Papa did not look up.

“Mostly outside.”

I considered this.

“I mean, when will we see it?”

He puffed his pipe and considered before answering.

“Likely not today.”

“Then what is all this?”

“The part which prevents it from colliding with itself.”

That seemed promising enough.

Papa had agreed to let me sit with him for the afternoon because I had been pestering him for several days to show me how the business actually worked.

I do not know what he expected me to do.

Sit quietly, perhaps.

Grow bored and leave, more likely.

This was his first mistake.

After a truly unreasonable quantity of questions, Papa surrendered a harmless stack of correspondence and told me to put together anything concerning the same matter.

This seemed simple.

It was not.

The correspondence had apparently been filed according to some mysterious principle involving date, sender, office, and the personal grudges of whichever clerk had last handled it.

I corrected this.

I spread the letters across the carpet, sorting and resorting until I had made several distinct piles. Each received a card, and once I understood enough of the matter, a little cover page explaining what I thought Papa ought to know.

There was a surprising amount about late freight and weather.

I did not consider this particularly interesting.

By the time Papa looked over his spectacles at me again, I had produced several piles.

“What have you done?”

“Improved it.”

“I see.”

He leaned sideways and picked up the card resting atop the first.

PEOPLE PAPA NEEDS TO YELL AT

Papa made a peculiar noise.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

He picked up the next.

PEOPLE PAPA HAS ALREADY YELLED AT

He covered his mouth.

I became suspicious.

“You are laughing.”

“I am not.”

“You are!”

“I am impressed.”

This was plainly untrue, but sufficiently flattering that I allowed it.

The third pile was labelled:

THINGS WHICH ARE PROBABLY NOT PAPA’S FAULT

This one he kept.

He tucked the card beneath his paperweight.

“That may be the thinnest file in the company,” he said.

“I thought so too.”

I began drawing up a sufficient replacement card with great enthusiasm.

It was at approximately this point that Mama appeared in the doorway.

She stopped.

Papa stopped smiling.

I did not, because I had not yet learned to recognize this particular arrangement of silence.

Mama looked at me.

Then at the papers.

Then at Papa.

Then back at me.

She wore dark green wool, her hair pinned neatly into place, and possessed the remarkable ability to look perfectly composed at an hour when I had acquired ink on three fingers, one cuff, and somehow my cheek.

Her eyes settled first upon those fingers.

Then the papers spread across the floor.

Then my sleeves, which I had pushed back from my wrists.

“Why,” she asked very calmly, “is Viola doing accounts?”

“She isn’t.”

“She is sitting in your study with a ledger.”

“Those are not the accounts, my dear.”

“It appears distressingly adjacent.”

Papa leaned back in his chair.

“She wanted to see the business.”

“And you showed her the correspondence?”

“It is business.”

Mama’s expression suggested that this was exactly the problem.

At twelve, I did not entirely understand why.

I knew only that Mama occasionally became peculiar about Papa’s business. She did not dislike it. She certainly enjoyed many of the things it purchased. But there were people among her relations and acquaintances who could say the words railway money in a manner suggesting that the railway itself had tracked mud across the carpet.

I understand now what she must have heard when she saw me sitting there with ink on my fingers and papers spread around my knees:

Imagine -- Mister Bellamy’s daughter must work. 

It would not have mattered that I had asked to be there.

It would not have mattered that Papa was indulging me.

In the right drawing room, stripped of all inconvenient context, it would have become something much more useful to the wrong people.

A little proof that the Bellamys were not quite what they pretended to be.

At twelve, however, I understood none of this.

I understood only that Mama was looking at me as though I had wandered unusually close to something improper.

“Darling,” she said, “come with me for a moment.”

I thought I was in trouble.

This was not entirely wrong.

Mama took me into the morning room and closed the door.

Her room was much brighter than Papa’s and considerably less conquered by paper. Pale light came through the windows, a little clock ticked above the mantel, and a fire burned there too despite the calendar’s continued insistence that summer had all but arrived.

Mama sat at her writing desk and held out her hand.

“Show me what you have written.”

I handed her my cards and cover pages with growing excitement, expecting to amuse her as I had Papa.

She read the first heading.

MISTER PRITCHARD HAS LOST THREE WAGONS

Her eyebrows rose.

“Did he?”

“Yes!”

“Did you see him lose them?”

I frowned.

“No.”

“Did your father say that Mister Pritchard lost them?”

“He said his office had misplaced the manifests.”

“That is not the same thing.”

“But the wagons were still missing.”

“Perhaps. But you do not know why.”

I remember feeling suddenly very small.

Until then the whole afternoon had seemed like a game Papa and I were playing together.

Mama had made it serious.

She did not sound angry, which somehow made matters worse.

She took up a pencil.

“Try again.”

I stared at the page.

The little clock continued ticking while I considered the injustice being done to perfectly good prose.

Eventually I said:

“Three wagons cannot presently be accounted for.”

“Better.”

“Mister Pritchard’s office has misplaced the manifests.”

“Good.”

I hesitated.

“Which is very irritating.”

Mama looked at me.

“That may be true.”

“Papa thinks so.”

“Then Papa may say so.”

I did not think this was fair.

Mama must have seen it on my face.

She sighed and set the paper down.

“Viola, if people are expected to rely upon what you write, then you must be careful to separate what happened from what you believe about it.”

“Even when what I believe is right?”

“Especially then.”

I disliked this answer enormously.

She turned another page.

MISTER HARCOURT’S RIDICULOUS PROPOSAL

Mama closed her eyes.

“What was ridiculous about it?”

“Papa said it would bankrupt them.”

From the next room came Papa’s voice:

“I did say that, love.”

Mama raised her voice without looking toward the door.

“You are not assisting.”

“I did think accuracy important in the matter.”

“Silence is occasionally useful as well.”

There was a pause.

“I shall make a note of it.”

Mama waited until she could no longer hear Papa laughing.

Then she looked back at me.

“Write what the proposal was. Write what objection was raised. If someone reading it wishes to conclude that it was ridiculous, allow them the dignity of arriving there themselves.”

“That sounds much less interesting.”

“Yes.”

“Will anyone read it?”

Mama’s mouth twitched.

“That is a separate difficulty.”

I brightened.

“Then perhaps a joke?”

“No.”

“A small joke?”

“No.”

“A particularly tasteful joke?”

“Viola.”

I folded my hands.

“Yes, Mama.”

She continued through the pages.

She crossed out several accusations.

She made me replace “idiotic” with “impractical.”

She made me change “would not listen” to “did not agree.” 

She objected strongly to PEOPLE PAPA NEEDS TO YELL AT, though she admitted that CORRESPONDENCE REQUIRING REPLY conveyed much the same information.

This seemed cowardly to me.

At some point her corrections became explanations, though I do not think I appreciated the distinction then.

“And one more thing,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Do not write about someone in a way you would be ashamed to have them read.”

I frowned.

“Even if they are never going to read it?”

“Especially then.”

I understood this even less than the rest.

At twelve, I thought Mama was teaching me how to avoid being rude.

I also thought she was spoiling a very good afternoon.

Only much later did I understand that Mama’s first concern had been appearance, but that she did not leave the matter there.

She might easily have told me to stop.

She did not.

She merely insisted that if I meant to do it, I ought to do it properly.

When we returned to Papa’s study, he looked over my revised pages.

I noticed he had moved several of my piles.

He had not disturbed their order.

“Where have all the interesting headings gone?”

“Mama killed them.”

“We improved them,” Mama corrected.

Papa read silently for a moment.

He adjusted his spectacles.

“Well. This is likely better.”

I was betrayed.

“You liked the headings.”

“I loved the headings.”

“Then why is this better?”

He tapped the cover page.

“Because now I can hand it to someone else.”

I considered this.

I did not like it.

Which is perhaps why I drafted one final card before I left:

MATTERS WHICH HAVE BECOME LESS INTERESTING BUT APPARENTLY MORE USEFUL

Papa read it.

Then he laughed hard enough to take the pipe from his mouth.

Mama, who had nearly reached the doorway, turned back.

She read the card.

She looked at me.

Then narrowed her eyes at Papa.

“One,” she said.

“One what?” I asked.

“One joke.”

“Per page?”

“Per document.”

Papa shook his head gravely.

“Cruel.”

Mama gave him a look.

“You created this.”

“I cannot fathom what you mean, dear.”

At the time, I thought I had won.

In truth, I think they had both won rather more thoroughly.

I had forgotten how much of that afternoon stayed with me.

Papa taught me that information becomes more useful when someone else can understand it. Mama taught me that if people are to trust what I write, I owe them something more than cleverness.

Fairness, mostly. Accuracy where I can manage it.

And preferably no headings accusing anyone of losing railway wagons unless I am quite certain they did.

I, myself, seem to have supplied the conviction that none of this need be unbearable to read.

Mama permitted one joke per document. I have interpreted this generously ever since.

Perhaps that is part of what I have been doing here. Taking things which begin scattered and trying to arrange them into some sort of connection.

A problem beside the person who might solve it.

A question beside the person who might answer it.

A decision somewhere everyone may find it again.

A stranger given enough food, shelter, work, and patience to perhaps become a neighbour.

A telegraph line given a voice, in the hope that someone very far away might answer.

I cannot build every wall, mend every wire, mine every lump of coal, or catch every fish.

I can usually find someone who can. Perhaps that is enough of a contribution for one person.

There are smaller arrangements, too.

I have, incidentally, made another list:

That last one, I think, rather justifies the whole exercise.

— V. 

P.S. PEOPLE VIVI NEEDS TO YELL AT currently contains only my name. This seems efficient. I shall therefore continue experimenting with paint until I discover Biscotte Brown or am stopped by higher authority.