And they had, for nearly fifteen years. They’d cleared land, planted fruit trees and a vegetable garden, and raised goats for milk, butter, and yogurt. There were twelve other people on the commune in the beginning. After six years there were just eight of them left, but by then the children had started coming. The kids had run free, and they had names like Free, Moonbeam, and Meadow. Spirit had named her children for the sea, the earth, and the sun: Maris, Terra, and Ra (who later decided he would rather be Ray). She’d believed, and so had Freedom Man, that children were born filled with truth and goodness, and they should be allowed to grow without the restrictions and rules that society placed on people. They would learn to read when they decided they were ready and they would study what and when they wanted to learn.
Maris’s interest in art had begun early. Both her parents had encouraged her and sometimes she would draw pictures all day. Then she would give them to Terra and Ra to colour. The walls of their house were covered with drawings of animals, trees, flowers, people — anything Maris could see in the sheltered world around her. One day Spirit had taught her about still-life drawing. She had taken one of her own pottery bowls and filled it with fruit. Placing it on the kitchen table, she had added a candle and an open book, and told Maris to draw it. Then she had rearranged the objects, putting the fruit on the table, and the candle in the bowl. Another time she placed a sleeping kitten on the book.
By the age of ten, Maris began to develop a style of her own. But she hadn’t yet started to work in colours, except for red. She loved red and usually included something red in her drawings. They were quite dramatic in their own way, especially after her father gave her a bottle of black ink and some Japanese brushes. The commune operated on the barter system as much as possible, and Freedom Man would drive up the coast in an old pickup truck and trade fresh eggs, chickens, fruit, and vegetables for staples like flour and sugar. At the hardware store in nearby Gibsons, he traded some of Spirit’s pottery for small cans of paint and brushes for Maris. When Freedom Man left a few years later, Spirit started to sell her pottery for cash so she could buy art supplies for Maris. She got a library card and borrowed books on art and art history so that Maris could study and learn from the masters.
By this time, twelve-year-old Terra had developed an interest in pop music and wanted to learn the guitar, and Ra, who was nine, was obsessed with reptiles and spiders, especially the poisonous ones. Spirit refused to accept money from Freedom Man, who was no longer Freedom Man, of course, but Arthur Cousins, businessman, but he opened bank accounts for each of the children and deposited an allowance each month so that they could have some “extras,” as he called them. He was not without a conscience, even though Spirit told him he was a shallow, unscrupulous shit. But he was determined to provide an education for his children, however they wished to get one.
A couple of years after Arthur left, the three kids were still being home-schooled on the commune. Arthur wanted Maris to go to high school, so he drove out to the commune (in his BMW convertible) several times to talk to Spirit about it. He said Maris could come and live with him and Shirley and go to a good school. He would arrange for her to take the entrance exams so she could be admitted to a public school. Spirit said absolutely not. She was adamant that Maris would stay with her on the commune. End of discussion. Fine, said Arthur, she could be bused to Gibsons every day. He knew there was no point arguing with Spirit when she got like this.
Shirley didn’t say anything but she was secretly relieved that Maris would not be coming to live with them. She told Arthur, however, that she was very disappointed. She said that she had been looking forward to having a daughter, but she understood why Spirit did not want to let Maris go. She suggested that Arthur increase the children’s allowances. It was only fair since they were forced to endure such primitive conditions because their mother had custody.
Arthur provided a tutor so that Maris would pass the high school entrance exams and she started school at Lord Stanley Secondary School in September 1978.
December 1923
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Chapter Five
Singapore
December 3, 1923
My Dearest Annabelle,
To say “I miss you” is to put into cheap, inadequate words a longing that surpasses anything I have ever felt. I am here with Sutty and we have settled into the Raffles Hotel and are quite comfortable, except that half of me is missing because you are not here. Sutty says that if I don’t stop moping around like a lovesick old elephant he’s going to turn me into a character in one of his books and have me die a horrible death. So come to Singapore, I implore you, and let’s be married and fulfill our destiny. Don’t abandon me to Sutty’s pen.
When I think of you in dreary old London in December my heart breaks anew. The sun shines so brightly here every day that we’re forced to shield our eyes. We are like moles who are obliged to live above ground when we have been bred by Mother Nature (as Mr. Darwin said) to exist in a gloomy netherworld called England. We are squinty-eyed and pathetic creatures, our skin turning red wherever it is exposed and our stomachs protesting at the unfamiliar food.
Ah, but I mislead you, my dear. I make this place sound like some kind of hell, when it is only that because you are not here. In fact, it’s a glorious place, full of trees and flowers most exotic, and the sun, the sun, is magnificent and warm. And when it rains, it’s usually a lovely, warm, soft rain, not like those sharp pellets of filthy water that fall from England’s skies.
As for the writing, I have been eking out a word here and there. Nothing like Sutty’s proliferation of prose, of course. But then, who else but Sutty can turn the most prosaic encounter into a story of brilliant proportions? He is a true genius while I am but a poor scribbler, aspiring to greatness but always sliding ever backwards because my feet are planted, not so firmly, in the mud. I cannot seem to land on solid ground again like Sutty, because … because … if you were here, you could tell me why.
My Annabelle, my Sweet Annabelle, I long to see you and to hold you in my arms. Come to me, my darling. Sutty wants you to come, too, if only so he can enjoy his beer without hearing me weep.
I love you. I love you.
Your adoring
Francis
Annabelle finished reading Francis’s letter and gazed around the dreary sitting room of her father’s house. She had grown up in these small, stuffy rooms and it was the only home she had known. Since her mother’s death last year, she had been housekeeper and companion to her father, a man once hale and hearty, now suddenly old and broken. “I’ll be myself soon enough,” he kept telling her. “Don’t you worry about me.” But how could she leave him and go halfway around the world? And how would Francis support her, with his wanting to be a writer and all? It was all right for Sutty; he had a small income from his grandfather. And people knew him and were buying his books. But Francis hadn’t yet made a name for himself. Who would pay good money for a book written by Francis Adolphus Stone when they could buy Edward Sutcliffe Moresby?
Annabelle had begun to worry about such things since her mother’s death. She was not yet twenty-four years old but already she felt the burden of life falling on her shoulders like the heavy old woolen cloak her mother had worn when she worked as a nursing sister during the war. Sometimes Annabelle thought she would suffocate just thinking about all the bad things that could happen to a person. She hadn’t wanted Francis to go to Singapore with Sutty. The ship would surely sink on the way; he would get a fever and would be buried at sea; or, if he did get to Singapore, there was malaria to worry about and no end to the diseases people were struck down with. She had heard the stories about cemeteries filled with the graves of babies and young women and men who had succumbed to the heat and the brackish water and the contaminated food.
Francis had laughed at her fears. Although Sutty, she noticed, had not. He was a more experienced traveller. He had seen things he didn’t like to talk about, but they were in his stories. She was sure he hadn’t