Glace Bay, Nova Scotia September 10, 1952
James Cameron was in a whorehouse, drunk, the night his daughter and son were bom. He was in bed, sandwiched in between the Scandinavian twins, when Kirstie, the madam of the brothel, pounded on the door.
"James!" she called out. She pushed open the door and walked in.
"Och, ye auld hen!" James yelled out indignantly. "Can't a mon have any privacy even here?"
"Sorry to interrupt your pleasure, James. It's about your wife."
"Fuck my wife," Cameron roared.
"You did," Kirstie retorted, "and she's having your baby."
"So? Let her have it. That's what you women are guid for, nae?"
"The doctor just called. He's been trying desperately to find you. Your wife is bad off. You'd better hurry."
James Cameron sat up and slid to the edge of the bed, bleary-eyed, trying to clear his head. "Damned woman. She niver leaves me in peace." He looked up at the madam. "All right, I'll go." He glanced at the naked girls in the bed. "But I'll nae pay for these two."
"Never mind that now. You'd just better get back to the boardinghouse." She turned to the girls. "You two come along with me."
James Cameron was a once-handsome man whose face reflected fulfilled sins. He appeared to be in his early fifties. He was thirty years old and the manager of one of the boardinghouses owned by Sean MacAllister, the town banker. For the past five years James Cameron and his wife, Peggy, had divided the chores: Peggy did the cleaning and cooking for the two dozen boarders, and James did the drinking. Every Friday it was his responsibility to collect the rents from the four other boardinghouses in Glace Bay owned by MacAllister. It was another reason, if he needed one, to go out and get drunk.
James Cameron was a bitter man, who reveled in his bitterness. He was a failure, and he was convinced that everyone else was to blame. Over the years he had come to enjoy his failure. It made him feel like a martyr. When James was a year old, his family had emigrated to Glace Bay from Scotland with nothing but the few possessions they could carry, and they had struggled to survive. His father had put James to work in the coal mines when the boy was fourteen. James had suffered a slight back injury in a mining accident when he was sixteen, and had promptly quit the mine. One year later his parents were killed in a train disaster. So it was that James Cameron had decided that he was not responsible for his adversity - it was the Fates that were against him. But he had two great assets: He was extraordinarily handsome, and when he wished to, he could be charming. One weekend in Sydney, a town near Glace Bay, he met an impressionable young American girl named Peggy Maxwell, who was there on vacation with her family. She was not attractive, but the Maxwells were very wealthy, and James Cameron was very poor. He swept Peggy Maxwell off her feet, and against the advice of her father, she married him.
"I'm giving Peggy a dowry of five thousand dollars," her father told James. "The money will give you a chance to make something of yourself. You can invest it in real estate, and in five years it will double. I'll help you."
But James was not interested in waiting five years. Without consulting anyone, he invested the money in a wildcat oil venture with a friend, and sixty days later he was broke. His father-in-law, furious, refused to help him any further. "You're a fool, James, and I will not throw good money after bad."
The marriage that was going to be James Cameron's salvation turned out to be a disaster, for he now had a wife to support, and no job.
It was Sean MacAllister who had come to his rescue. The town banker was a man in his mid-fifties, a stumpy, pompous man, a pound short of being obese, given to wearing vests adorned with a heavy gold watch chain. He had come to Glace Bay twenty years earlier and had immediately seen the possibilities there. Miners and lumbermen were pouring into the town and were unable to find adequate housing. MacAllister could have financed homes for them, but he had a better plan. He decided it would be cheaper to herd the men together in boardinghouses. Within two years he had built a hotel and five boardinghouses, and they were always full.
Finding managers was a difficult task because the work was exhausting. The manager's job was to keep all the rooms rented, supervise the cooking, handle the meals, and see that the premises were kept reasonably clean. As far as salaries were concerned, Sean MacAllister was not a man to throw away his money.
The manager of one of his boardinghouses had just quit, and MacAllister decided that James Cameron was a likely candidate. Cameron had borrowed small amounts of money from the bank from time to time, and payment on a loan was overdue. MacAllister sent for the young man.
"I have a job for you," MacAllister said.
"You have?"
"You're in luck. I have a splendid position that's just opened up."
"Working at the bank, is it?" James Cameron asked. The idea of working in a bank appealed to him. Where there was a lot of money, there was always a possibility of having some stick to one's fingers.
"Not at the bank," MacAllister told him. "You're a very personable young man, James, and I think you would be very good at dealing with people. I'd like you to run my boardinghouse on Cablehead Avenue."
"A boardinghouse, you say?" There was contempt in the young man's voice.
"You need a roof over your head," MacAllister pointed out. "You and your wife will have free room and board and a small salary."
"How sma?"
"I'll be generous with you, James. Twenty-five dollars a week."
"Twenty-fi...?"
"Take it or leave it. I have others waiting."
In the end James Cameron had no choice. "I'll tach it."
"Good. By the way, every Friday I'll also expect you to collect the rents from my other boardinghouses and deliver the money to me on Saturday."
When James Cameron broke the news to Peggy, she was dismayed. "We don't know anything about running a boardinghouse, James."
"We'll learn. We'll share the work."
And she had believed him. "All right. We'll manage," she said.
And in their own fashion they had managed.
Over the years, several opportunities had come along for James Cameron to get better jobs, employment that would give him dignity and more money, but he was enjoying his failure too much to leave it.
"Why bother?" he would grumble. "When Fate's agin you, naething guid can happen."
And now, on this September night, he thought, They won't even let me enjoy my whores in peace. God damn my wife.
When he stepped out of Madam Kirstie's establishment, a chilly September wind was blowing.
I'd best fortify myself for the troubles aheid, James Cameron decided. He stopped in at the Ancient Mariner.
One hour later he wandered toward the boardinghouse in New Aberdeen, the poorest section of Glace Bay.
When he finally arrived, half a dozen boarders were anxiously waiting for him.
"The doctor is in wi' Peggy," one of the men said. "You'd better hurry, mon."
James staggered into the tiny, dreary back bedroom he and his wife shared. From another room he could hear the whimpering of a newborn baby. Peggy lay on the bed, motionless. Dr. Patrick Duncan was leaning over her. He turned as he heard James enter.
"Wass goin' on here?" James asked.
The doctor straightened up and looked at James with distaste. "You should have had your wife come to see me," he said.
"And throw guid money away? She's only haein' a baby. Wass the big...?"
"Peggy's dead. I did everything I could. She had twins. I couldn't save the boy."
"Oh, Jesus," James Cameron whimpered. "It's the Fates agin."
"What?"
"The Fates. They've always been agin me. Now they've taine my bairn frae me. I dinna..."
A nurse walked in, carrying a tiny baby wrapped in a blanket. "This is your daughter, Mr. Cameron."
"A daughter? Wha' the hell will I dae wi' a daughter?" His speech was becoming more slurred.
"You disgust me, mon," Dr. Duncan said.
The nurse turned to James. "I'll stay until tomorrow and show you how to take care of her."
James Cameron looked at the tiny, wrinkled bundle in the blanket and thought, hopefully: Maybe she'll die, too.
For the first three weeks no one was sure whether the baby would live or not. A wet nurse came in to tend to her. And finally, the day came when the doctor was able to say, "Your daughter is going to live."
And he looked at James Cameron and said under his breath, "God have mercy on the poor child."
The wet nurse said, "Mr. Cameron, you must give the child a name."
"I dinna care wha' the hell ye call it. Ye gie her a name."
"Why don't we name her Lara? That's such a pretty..."
"Suit your bloody self."
And so she was christened Lara.
There was no one in Lara's life to care for her or nurture her. The boardinghouse was filled with men too busy with their own lives to pay attention to the baby. The only woman around was Bertha, the huge Swede who was hired to do the cooking and handle the chores.
James Cameron was determined to have nothing to do with his daughter. The damned Fates had betrayed him once again by letting her live. At night he would sit in the living room with his bottle of whiskey and complain. "The bairn murdered my wife and my son."
"You shouldn't say that, James."
"Weel, it's sae. My son would hae grown up to be a big strapping mon. He would hae been smart and rich and taine good care of his father in his auld age."
And the boarders let him ramble on.
James Cameron tried several times to get in touch with Maxwell, his father-in-law, hoping he would take the child off his hands, but the old man had disappeared. It would be just my luck the auld fool's daid, he thought.
Glace Bay was a town of transients who moved in and out of the boardinghouses. They came from France and China and the Ukraine. They were Italian and Irish and Greek, carpenters and tailors and plumbers and shoemakers. They swarmed into lower Main Street, Bell Street, North Street, and Water Street, near the waterfront area. They came to work the mines and cut timber and fish the seas. Glace Bay was a frontier town, primitive and rugged. The weather was an abomination. The winters were harsh with heavy snowfalls that lasted until April, and because of the heavy ice in the harbor, even April and May were cold and windy, and from July to October it rained.
There were eighteen boardinghouses in town, some of them accommodating as many as seventy-two guests. At the boardinghouse managed by James Cameron, there were twenty-four boarders, most of them Scotsmen.
Lara was hungry for affection, without knowing what the hunger was. She had no toys or dolls to cherish nor any playmates. She had no one except her father. She made childish little gifts for him, desperate to please him, but he either ignored or ridiculed them.
When Lara was five years old, she overheard her father say to one of the boarders, "The wrong child died, ye ken. My son is the one who should hae lived."
That night Lara cried herself to sleep. She loved her father so much. And she hated him so much.
When Lara was six, she resembled a Keane painting, enormous eyes in a pale, thin face. That year a new boarder moved in. His name was Mungo McSween, and he was a huge bear of a man. He felt an instant affection for the little girl.
"What's your name, wee lassie?"
"Lara."
"Ah. 'Tis a braw name for a braw bairn. Dae ye gan to school then?"
"School? No."
"And why not?"
"I don't know."
"Weel, we maun find out."
And he went to find James Cameron. "I'm tauld your bairn daes nae gae to school."
"And why should she? She's only a girl. She dinna need no school."
"You're wrong, mon. She maun have an education. She maun be gien a chance in life."
"Forget it," James said. "It wad be a waste."
But McSween was insistent, and finally, to shut him up, James Cameron agreed. It would keep the brat out of his sight for a few hours.
Lara was terrified by the idea of going to school. She had lived in a world of adults all her short life, and had had almost no contact with other children.
The following Monday Big Bertha dropped her off at St. Anne's Grammar School, and Lara was taken to the principal's office.
"This is Lara Cameron."
The principal, Mrs. Cummings, was a middle-aged gray-haired widow with three children of her own. She studied the shabbily dressed little girl standing before her. "Lara. What a pretty name," she said, smiling. "How old are you, dear?"
"Six." She was fighting back tears.
The child is terrified, Mrs. Cummings thought. "Well, we're very glad to have you here, Lara. You'll have a good time, and you're going to learn a lot."
"I can't stay," Lara blurted out.
"Oh? Why not?"
"My papa misses me too much." She was fiercely determined not to cry.
"Well, we'll only keep you here for a few hours a day."
Lara allowed herself to be taken into a classroom filled with children, and she was shown to a seat near the back of the room.
Miss Terkel, the teacher, was busily writing letters on a blackboard.
"A is for apple," she said. "B is for boy. Does anyone know what C is for?"
A tiny hand was raised. "Candy."
"Very good! And D?"
"Dog."
"And E?"
"Eat."
"Excellent. Can anyone think of a word beginning with F?"
Lara spoke up. "Fuck."
Lara was the youngest one in her class, but it seemed to Miss Terkel that in many ways she was the oldest. There was a disquieting maturity about her.
"She's a small adult, waiting to grow taller," her teacher told Mrs. Cummings.
The first day at lunch, the other children took out their colorful little lunch pails and pulled out apples and cookies and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
No one had thought to pack a lunch for Lara.
"Where is your lunch, Lara?" Miss Terkel asked.
"I'm not hungry," Lara said stubbornly. "I had a big breakfast."
Most of the girls at school were nicely dressed in clean skirts and blouses. Lara had outgrown her few faded plaid dresses and threadbare blouses. She had gone to her father.
"I need some clothes for school," Lara said.
"Dae ye now? Weel, I'm nae made of money. Get yourself something frae the Salvation Army Citadel."
"That's charity, Papa."
And her father had slapped her hard across the face.
The children at school were familiar with games Lara had never even heard of. The girls had dolls and toys, and some of them were willing to share them with Lara, but she was painfully aware that nothing belonged to her. And there was something more. Over the next few years Lara got a glimpse of a different world, a world where children had mothers and fathers who gave them presents and birthday parties and loved them and held them and kissed them. And for the first time Lara began to realize how much was missing in her life. It only made her feel lonelier.
The boardinghouse was a different kind of school. It was an international microcosm. Lara learned to tell where the boarders came from by their names. Mac was from Scotland...Hodder and Pyke were from Newfoundland...Chiasson and Aucoin were from France...Dudash and Kosick from Poland. The boarders were lumbermen, fishermen, miners, and tradesmen. They would gather in the large dining room in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for supper, and their talk was fascinating to Lara. Each group seemed to have its own mysterious language.
There were thousands of lumbermen in Nova Scotia, scattered around the peninsula. The lumbermen at the boardinghouse smelled of sawdust and burnt bark, and they spoke of arcane things like chippers and edging and trim.
"We should get out almost two hundred million board feet this year," one of them announced at supper.
"How can feet be bored?" Lara asked.
There was a roar of laughter. "Child, board foot is a piece of lumber a foot square by an inch thick. When you grow up and get married, if you want to build a five-room, all-wood house, it will take twelve thousand board feet."
"I'm not going to get married," Lara swore.
The fishermen were another breed. They returned to the boardinghouse stinking of the sea, and they talked about the new experiment of growing oysters on the Bras d'Or Lake and bragged to one another of their catches of cod and herring and mackerel and haddock.
But the boarders who fascinated Lara the most were the miners. There were thirty-five hundred miners in Cape Breton, working the collieries at Lingan and Prince and Phalen. Lara loved the names of the mines. There was the Jubilee and the Last Chance and the Black Diamond and the Lucky Lady.
She was fascinated by their discussion of the day's work.
"What's this I hear about Mike?"
"It's true. The poor bastard was traveling inbye in a man-rake, and a box jumped the track and crushed his leg. The son of a bitch of a foreman said it was Mike's fault for not gettin' out of the way fast enough, and he's having his lamp stopped."
Lara was baffled. "What does that mean?"
One of the miners explained. "It means Mike was on his way to work - going inbye - in a man-rake - that's a car that takes you down to your working level. A box - that's a coal train - jumped the track and hit him."
"And stopped his lamp?" Lara asked.
The miner laughed. "When you've had your lamp stopped, it means you've been suspended."
When Lara was fifteen, she entered St. Michael's High School. She was gangly and awkward, with long legs, stringy black hair, and intelligent gray eyes still too large for her pale, thin face. No one quite knew how she was going to turn out. She was on the verge of womanhood, and her looks were in a stage of metamorphosis. She could have become ugly or beautiful.
To James Cameron, his daughter was ugly. "Ye hae best marry the first mon fool enough to ask ye," he told her. "Ye'll nae hae the looks to make a guid bargain."
Lara stood there, saying nothing.
"And tell the poor mon nae to expect a dowry frae me."
Mungo McSween had walked into the room. He stood there listening, furious.
"That's all, girl," James Cameron said. "Gae back to the kitchen."
Lara fled.
"Why dae ye dae that to your daughter?" McSween demanded.
James Cameron looked up, his eyes bleary. "Nane of your business."
"You're drunk."
"Aye. And what else is there? If it isn't women, it's the whiskey, isn't it?"
McSween went into the kitchen, where Lara was washing dishes at the sink. Her eyes were hot with tears. McSween put his arms around her. "Niver ye mind, lassie," he said. "He dinna mean it."
"He hates me."
"Nae, he doesna."
"He's never given me one kind word. Never once. Never!"
There was nothing McSween could say.
In the summer the tourists would arrive at Glace Bay. They came in their expensive cars, wearing beautiful clothes and shopped along Castle Street and dined at the Cedar House and at Jasper's, and they visited Ingonish Beach and Cape Smoky and the Bird Islands. They were superior beings from another world, and Lara envied them and longed to escape with them when they left at the end of summer. But how?
Lara had heard stories about Grandfather Maxwell.
"The auld bastard tried to keep me frae marryin' his precious daughter," James Cameron would complain to any of the boarders who would listen. "He was filthy rich, but do ye think he wad gie me aught? Nae. But I took guid care of his Peggy anyway..."
And Lara would fantasize that one day her grandfather would come to take her away to glamorous cities she had read about: London and Rome and Paris. And I'll have beautiful clothes to wear. Hundreds of dresses and new shoes.
But as the months and the years went by, and there was no word, Lara finally came to realize that she would never see her grandfather. She was doomed to spend the rest of her life in Glace Bay.
