Rockley
Nova Scotia
April 1877
“She’s late as usual,” Mabel complained. “That girl seems to think she can do as she pleases around here. She needs to be shown who’s boss. She just turned seventeen. Time to start acting like a young lady.”
“Leave her alone, Mabel,” John warned from the porch where he was taking off his boots. “Just saw her walking in the lane as I was coming from the barn. She’ll be here in a minute. Boy, it’s some cold out for this time of year.”
Mabel stood stirring chicken soup in a large pot. John kept talking.
“It’s damp and it looks like we’re going to have another dump of snow before long. Saw Doc Creed coming in the lane behind Mary. Must be delivering more of Ann’s tonic.”
“Tonic my arse,” Mabel said. “It’s been a good five months now and I don’t see how that stuff has done her any good at all.”
“It calms her nerves, she says.” John sat down at the kitchen table.
“Calms them! I’d say it makes them worse, if anything,” Mabel countered, bringing a cup of tea over to her brother.
“Ann was never totally right in the head to begin with but it’s gotten worse since she fell,” Mabel said. “And she hasn’t done a day’s work since. And pretending that she can’t walk. She should be ashamed with two little ones to look after, and leaving an old woman like me to do all the work. She’s not even a fitting wife to Will any—”
There was a noise in the porch and John put a finger to his lips. Mary came through the kitchen door with parcels in her arms.
John was about to greet Mary when Mabel started in.
“And where have you been? I sent you to Bailey’s over an hour ago. What took you so long? You’re supposed to be looking after the little ones while I get supper ready.”
“You’re not my Ma,” Mary said standing in front of her grandmother. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
Mabel sprang away from the stove as if stung.
“How dare you, you little skate…so high and mighty. Wait til your pa hears about your sass. He’ll soon put the kibosh to that.”
“Pa won’t listen to anything you say against me.”
Mary raised her head in the air and walked past Mabel towards the hallway. Her grandmother grabbed her by the arm, and slapped Mary across the face.
John jumped to his feet. Mary’s shocked look dissolved into tears and the parcels she was carrying fell to the floor as she ran from the room.
“That’ll teach you to sass me,” Mabel yelled after her.
“Mabel! Mabel, you’re way too hard on the girl,” John said, stooping down to retrieve the groceries. “There’s no need to be hitting her like that.”
“I don’t like the way she’s been acting this last while back. Full of sass.”
Little Helen ran into the kitchen from the parlour.
“Mumma wants to know if the doctor came yet.”
“Tell her majesty that no he ain’t,” Mabel barked. The child scurried away.
There was a knock on the porch door and the sound of stamping boots. John opened the kitchen door to find Doctor Creed brushing flakes of wet snow off his black greatcoat.
“Getting messy out there,” he said.
“Have a seat, Doc. Mabel will get you a nice strong cup of tea.”
Creed stepped inside. “How’s Ann doing this evening?”
“Herself is the same.” Mabel frowned. “She’s still holding court in the parlour. I’ll bring your tea in to you in a few minutes.”
Lying on the couch and wrapped in a blanket, Ann had been awakened by someone far away, yelling in the distance. Her mind fought to come to the surface of consciousness. She blinked her eyes, straining to focus them.
“Little…Helen…?”
“Yes, Mumma.”
The child was sitting on the floor in front of her with a doll in her lap.
Ann licked her lips. So dry, she thought to herself.
“What’s dry, Mumma?” the little girl asked.
Ann hadn’t known she’d spoken aloud.
“Mumma is,” she replied. “Could you run and ask if the doctor has arrived yet?”
Little Helen ran out the door. There was more yelling and she returned.
“Not yet, Mumma.”
“Then you go run and play with Harry.”
The footsteps receded.
Ann tried to raise her head but gave up and flopped back down on the pillow. She scratched at both arms with her fingernails, bringing out long welts. Her arms and legs were always itchy now. She tried to remember the dream she’d been having before she woke up. She had been in a room filled with books. She and a man were in the room alone. She struggled to remember. Was it even a dream? A memory?
Suddenly, there was a man standing in the doorway. She narrowed her eyes again.
“Ann?”
She ran her dry tongue over her teeth and smiled widely. She’d been waiting so long. She extended her hand to him. He pressed it in his own and stared at her.
“I need another bottle of my tonic.”
“I just gave you two bottles last week to see you through my being away. I haven’t even left for Halifax yet, and now you need more?”
“My nerves have really been bad lately. I had to take more medicine than usual to calm myself down.”
“Why are you still down here in the parlour? And have you been doing any walking? I’ve been telling you for months that you need to. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to walk up and down stairs by now. You need to strengthen that leg.”
Mabel appeared in the doorway with a teacup. She set it down on the table.
“I can’t climb the stairs, my leg still bothers me.”
The doctor sighed and shook his head. “I just don’t believe that after all this time, you can’t walk normally. You’d feel better and be able to get a proper rest if you were in your own bed.”
“Yes, and you’d be out of the way in the bargain,” Mabel told her.
Ann felt tears in her eyes. Couldn’t they see how sick she was?
“I’m just so tired and I can’t sleep, not unless I have some tonic. And to settle my stomach. It feels upset all the time.”
“This is what we’re going to do,” Dr. Creed directed. “John and I are going to carry you up to bed and you’re going to sleep there from now on. And I’ll give you some more laudanum, but just a bit. You need to get weaned off it now. You’re using it as a crutch and you’ll get less and less until you don’t need it anymore.”
“But…” Ann started to plead. Dread welled up inside her.
Creed turned to Mabel. “Mrs. Harney, ask your brother to step in here.”
He turned back to Ann.
“It’ll be all right.”
He stood watching her with arms folded. Ann sank back down into the cushions.
“Ah, here he is. John, Ann is going upstairs to rest. We’ll make a chair with our arms for her. Never mind pouting, Ann. Put an arm around each of us. This is for your own good. Stay still now.”
“She’s light as a feather, eh, Doc?” John grinned.
“She’s lost too much flesh,” Creed said. “She’d be less nervous with a little more meat on her bones.”
“Everything makes me gag.” Ann groaned, her head swaying back and forth as they carried her up the stairs.
“It’s the first door on the left down the hall,” John said as they reached the landing with their bundle.
“I don’t want to stay up here,” she said as John eased his shoulder against the bedroom door to open it. “I want to sleep by myself. I said, I don’t want to stay up here.”
Manoeuvring a path through clothes, bottles, and dirty dishes, they made their way to the unmade bed and gently deposited Ann upon it.
“Let me yell for Mabel to come fix up the room,” John said, kicking a pile of clothes out of the way.
“I’ll get some fresh air in here.” Creed moved to the one window in the room, a big two-over-two with a crack in its right lower pane. He strained in the effort to open it.
“It’s painted shut,” Ann said, turning listlessly to look at him.
“Damn.” Creed backed away, shaking his head.
Mabel came charging through the door with John on her heels.
“This place is a mess, Mabel. Don’t you ever clean up in here? You’d think Will was a kid instead of a grown man.”
“It’s because he is that I don’t,” she said. “It’s not up to a mother to clean up after her boy once he’s married. It’s his wife’s job then and her majesty hasn’t done a damn thing for months now.”
“I’m not well,” Ann said, close to tears.
Mabel dismissed her with a wave of her hand. She bent down and started picking clothes up off the floor.
“These bedsheets should be changed,” Creed said. “Where’s Mary? She could help with this.”
Mabel yelled down the hallway. Mary opened her bedroom door a crack and looked at her grandmother.
“Come and help me clean up this mess in your father’s room and behave yourself, we have company.”
“Yes, Grandma.”
The door closed again.
“And be quick about it, Missy,” Mabel bellowed. “Useless as a five-wheel wagon,” she said storming back into the room.
“Ann,” Dr. Creed said, “your pulse is racing. I’ll give you something to make you sleep. In the meantime—oh, here’s Mary. Young lady, run down to the kitchen and get your mother some of that lovely soup that your grandmother was making when I came in. She needs a full stomach to help her sleep better.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Move Queen Victoria over to the armchair there so I can make that bed,” Mabel commanded.
Minutes later, Mary came back carrying a bowl of soup on a tray.
“Thank you.” Creed smiled. He took the tray and placed it across Ann’s knees.
“Eat as much of this as you can,” he instructed.
Mabel made the bed while Ann slurped the soup. She took four spoonfuls then placed the spoon inside the bowl.
“That’s not very much.”
“It’s all I can stand right now.”
John and the doctor helped her from the armchair into the clean bed.
“Do you need me for anything else, Grandma?” Mary asked.
“Pick up all this mess on the floor then go get the broom and give this floor a good sweeping.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Creed walked back over to the bed. “Now, Ann, I’m going to give you some laudanum to help you sleep and will leave the rest of it with Mrs. Harney to look after.”
He turned to Mabel and John.
“She needs a good night’s rest.”
Mabel sighed loudly and headed downstairs with the bottle.
John held Ann’s hand until Mabel came back into the room.
“Here’s your nightcap,” she said, thrusting a full tumbler at Ann.
“Thank you, Mabel.” Dr. Creed smiled encouragingly. “I’ll just make sure that Ann is comfortable here and then I’ll be on my way.”
Ann grabbed the glass and greedily drained it.
I’m all right, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep.
Rockley
Nova Scotia
September 1, 1877
Will and Mabel had decided that it was time for Mary to start earning her keep. She was old enough and strong enough, they reasoned, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find her a position. Well-to-do families like the Pineos or the Clays in Pugwash were always looking for good, respectable girls, so there’d be no need for her to return to Rockley School.
“She’s got her grade nine,” Mabel said to John one evening. “That’s a lot of schooling for a girl. More than is needed, truth be known.”
“We really can’t afford to keep her, with her not contributing nothing to the household. More reading and writing’s not going to help her anyway,” Will agreed.
Mary didn’t want to go to a stranger’s house to work. And she didn’t want to stop going to school, since Smith was to be the schoolmaster.
“I plan to be a doctor someday,” he’d told Mary one evening as they followed along behind the cows. “That means going away to Halifax for a long time. I want to start next fall, at Dalhousie.”
“You’re so smart, you’ll do it,” she replied.
“I’ve been going with Doc Creed sometimes on his rounds, learning as much as I can. He says I can work with him when the time comes. But I’ll need to teach school for a year to save some money. My parents just can’t afford to pay for everything. Room and board are high down there.”
He stopped in his tracks and, blushing, grabbed Mary by the arm.
“Do you think that you might like to live there some day?”
“In Halifax? I don’t know. What’s it like?”
“It’s grand. Lots of people around and so many buildings. They’re wonderful to see. The best is the statue of the lion commemorating two Crimean War soldiers. I’ve been to Halifax twice and spent a lot of time looking at it while Ma and Pa were calling on friends. It’s just up the street from the Waverley, a new inn where we stayed the last time we were there.”
“I wish I could see it someday,” Mary said.
“Per—perhaps I could show it to you,” Smith offered. “Someday maybe we could visit it together.”
“Maybe.” Mary smiled up at him, then quickly lowered her head.
“I’ll be a long time studying medicine.” He was still holding on to her arm.
“We need to get these cows home before they come looking for us,” Mary said, slipping out of his hold and continuing along the path.
They walked along in silence for a few more minutes.
“You’d better start back now,” she said, just above a whisper. “We don’t want Daddy to see you. It’s Friday and he might get back early from work.”
“I don’t care if he sees me or not. I’m not scared of him and I’m tired of just meeting you here. I want to court you proper. He’s going to have to know some day.”
“You might not be scared, but I am. I’m afraid of what he might do if he ever caught us walking out together.”
“He’s got a mean streak,” Smith said.
“He’s got a bad temper and yells a lot.”
“Does he yell at you?” Smith asked, reaching for her hand again.
“Sometimes.” Mary grimaced.
“I’d better not hear him do it.”
“He’s my father, he can do as he likes with me.” Mary blushed and turned away.
“No, he can’t. He’s not allowed to be cruel, as much as he wants you to believe he can,” Smith said. “Doesn’t your mother stand up for you against him? Ma lets Pa go only so far to discipline us.”
“Mumma just started to talk to me again after months of ignoring me,” Mary said.
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, we had a misunderstanding a while back and she never spoke to me for a long time. She was so mad at me.”
“But why?”
“It was…I just told her something she didn’t like. Now, you need to go, we’re getting close to the house,” Mary warned him.
“All right, I’ll go. But I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yes.” She smiled up at him. He bent down and kissed her.
Mary turned and ran down the hill.
Rockley
Nova Scotia
September 8, 1877
“All right, I’m leaving now,” Mabel yelled from the kitchen where she was pinning on her hat a
nd waiting for John to bring the horse and wagon to the porch door.
Mary, with Harry in her arms and trailed by Little Helen, came down the stairs.
“Your father will likely be home sometime this afternoon,” Mabel continued. “Since he didn’t get back last night, he likely worked overtime. Cut up some of that beef and use it with the potatoes and carrots I cooked last night to make a hash for dinner. You can heat it up again for supper if you want to.”
“Where you going, Grandma?” Little Helen asked.
“To Oxford to sit with Kay Brown. She sent a message early this morning. She wants me to come now. Hopefully it’s not a false alarm like the last time. I don’t expect to be home until about this time tomorrow, if even then.”
“We’ll be all right, Grandma,” Mary reassured her.
“You’re going to have to be. Mary, you watch these two. Don’t let them get away on you. John will be home as soon as he drops me off and does a few errands. And watch that one upstairs.”
Mabel reached out and touched the top of Harry’s head. The toddler smiled.
“You and Little Helen mind Mary. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“And while I’m there,” Mabel continued, “I’m going to ask around if anyone needs a good, dependable girl. I’ll get you a position yet, Mary, just you wait and see.”
Little Helen ran in circles around her grandmother.
“We’ll be good, I promise we will.”
“See that you do and stop that, you’re going to make yourself dizzy.” She turned to look at Mary one last time. “And you stay around the dooryard, don’t go sneaking off when your Uncle John gets back.”
“I won’t.”
“Hmmm,” Mabel replied on her way out the door.
They all trailed behind her into the yard.
“Bye, Unca,” Harry called, waving.
Uncle John waved in return. “I’ll be home as soon as I can, Mary. Watch the fires, and you two mind your sister.”
The children waved as John’s wagon went down the lane. Then Mary turned to the youngsters. “I have a whole day planned for us. First we’re going to play hide-and-seek then go for a walk and pick some cranberries. Then it’ll be time for dinner. How does that sound?”
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