Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [55]
"It wouldn't have to be as soberly as all that. I'm not an ogre." Yvonne was laughing too, but her dark eyes, that had been shining, were opaque and withdrawn,
"But what if Geoff hates farms? Perhaps the mere sight of a cow makes him seasick."
"Oh no. We often used to talk about having a farm in the old days."
"Do you know anything about farming?"
"No." Yvonne abruptly, delightfully, dismissed the possibility, leaning forward and stroking her mare's neck. "But I wondered if we mightn't get some couple who'd lost their own farm or something actually to run it for us and live on it."
"I wouldn't have thought it exactly a good point in history to begin to prosper as the landed gentry, but still maybe it is. Where's this farm to be?"
"Well... What's to stop us going to Canada, for instance?"
.".. Canada? ... Are you serious? Well, why not, but--"
"Perfectly."
They had now reached the place where the railway took its wide leftward curve and they descended the embankment. The grove had dropped behind but there was still thick woodland to their right (above the centre of which had appeared again the almost friendly landmark of the prison watchtower) and stretching far ahead. A road showed briefly along the margin of the woods. They approached this road slowly, following the single-minded thrumming telegraph poles and picking a difficult course through the scrub.
" I mean why Canada more than British Honduras? Or even Tristan da Cunha? A little lonely perhaps, though an admirable place for one's teeth, I've heard. Then there's Gough Island, hard by Tristan. That's uninhabited. Still, you might colonize it. Or Sokotra, where the frankincense and myrrh used to come from and the camels climb like chamois--my favourite island in the Arabian Sea." But Hugh's tone though amused was not altogether sceptical as he touched on these fantasies, half to himself, for Yvonne rode a little in front; it was as if he were after all seriously grappling with the problem of Canada while at the same time making an effort to pass off the situation as possessing any number of adventurous whimsical solutions. He caught up with her.
"Hasn't Geoffrey mentioned his genteel Siberia to you lately?" she said. "You surely haven't forgotten he owns an island in British Columbia?"
"On a lake, isn't it? Pineaus Lake. I remember. But there isn't any house on it, is there? And you can't graze cattle on fircones and hardpan."
"That's not the point, Hugh."
"Or would you propose to camp on it and have your farm elsewhere?"
"Hugh, listen--"
"But suppose you could only buy your farm in some place like Saskatchewan," Hugh objected. An idiotic verse came into his head, keeping time with the horse's hooves:
Oh take me back to Poor Fish River,
Take me back to Onion Lake,
You can keep the Guadalquivir,
Como you may likewise take.
Take me back to dear old Horsefly,
Aneroid or Gravelburg....
"In some place with a name like Product. Or even Dumble," he went on. "There must be a Dumble. In fact I know there's a Dumble."
"All right. Maybe it is ridiculous. But at least it's better than sitting here doing nothing!" Almost crying, Yvonne angrily urged her horse into a brief wild canter, but the terrain was too rough; Hugh reined in beside her and they halted together.
"I'm awfully, dreadfully sorry." Contrite, he took her bridle. "I was just being more than unusually bloody stupid."
"Then you do think it's a good idea?" Yvonne brightened slightly, even contriving again an air of mockery.
"Have you ever been to Canada?" he asked her.
"I've been to Niagara Falls."
They rode on, Hugh still holding her bridle. "I've never been to Canada at all. But a Canuck in Spain, a fisherman pal of mine with the Macs-Paps, used to keep telling me it was the most terrific place in the world. British Columbia, at any rate."
"That's what Geoffrey used to say too."
"Well, Geoff's liable to be vague on the subject. But here's what McGoff told me. This man was a Pict. Suppose you land in Vancouver, as seems reasonable. So far not so good. McGoff didn't have much use for modern Vancouver. According to him it has a sort of Pango Pango quality mingled with sausage and mash and generally a rather Puritan atmosphere. Everyone fast asleep and when you prick them a Union Jack flows out of the hole. But no one in a certain sense lives there. They merely as it were pass through. Mine the country and quit. Blast the land to pieces, knock down the trees and send them rolling down Burrard Inlet... As for drinking, by the way, that is beset," Hugh chuckled, "everywhere beset by perhaps favourable difficulties. No bars, only beer parlours so uncomfortable and cold that serve beer so weak no self-respecting drunkard would show his nose in them. You have to drink at home, and when you run short it's too far to get a bottle--"