The Sister's Tale

by Beth Powning

  “We held our first meeting,” Carrie rushed on. “Twelve of us. We read papers written by the English and the American suffragists. We planned to join the national organization. We felt that what we want to do will occur. It will! We all felt it.”

  Phone conversations were unadorned. Clicks indicated the presence of listeners.

  “Just as well not to travel, Carrie,” Josephine said. “A storm is coming.”

  She set the receiver back in its cradle.

  The house was quiet. The girls, at school. George, away at university. Smell of roast chicken and rhubarb sauce. Thud of feet overhead—voices.

  She had a meeting of the beautification committee this afternoon to discuss the year ahead. The planting of trees. Street cleaning. A town picnic.

  Feathers ruffled by Mr. Train, Pleasant Valley would resume.

  FOUR

  Ocracoke Island

  THE LETTERS LAY ON the hall floor. Josephine gathered them and went into the parlour, her mind on the bulging plaster in the upstairs hallway which she must discuss with Mr. Dougan.

  She sat at her desk, shuffling the letters. She separated out one with unfamiliar handwriting. She picked up her reading glasses, worked them onto her nose and peered at the frank. Her heart stuttered.

  Ocracoke, North Carolina.

  The envelope was brown, its edges soft and blunted.

  Mrs. Simeon Galloway, Creek Road, Pleasant Valley, New Brunswick, Canada.

  She lifted a brass paperknife and sliced open the envelope. Her hands trembled—withdrawing the paper. Unfolding it. Smoothing it.

  Elbows on blotting paper.

  Fingers to temples.

  January 15, 1888

  Dear Mrs. Galloway,

  I write to you from Ocracoke Island, where I am the lighthouse keeper. It is my sad duty to inform you that the ship “Marianne” went down off our island in a gale. Many were saved but unfortunately your brave husband was not among them. At the time of writing, his body is washed and decently clothed in our parlor. By the time you have received this letter, he will be carefully interred in our own family cemetery rather than in the dunes, as is customary with the many unfortunates who have washed up upon our beaches. We await your instructions as to marker, hoping for a visit from you and your family. My wife and I extend the greatest sympathy, and invite you to stay in our home for the duration of your visit, but should you wish privacy, there is a fine hotel.

  As for the particulars, it was seen from shore that the ship made her way northwards in a tremendous gale. It was feared that Ocracoke Light was mistaken for Hatteras Light, in which case such a course would have been correct, but unfortunately this drove the ship directly onto the shoals where she was instantly rolled onto her beam ends. People gathered on shore as enormous breakers crashed upon the vessel. It had commenced to snow and hail. No lifeboats could set out, such was the extent of the surf. In the mist and spray, we made out several men clinging to shrouds on the bow, and could see that they flung an item overboard. Through the telescope we made it out to be a dog, which after a gallant and desperate swim, came upon the shore with a line attached to its collar. By means of this rope, we were able to rescue all the women aboard the ship and some of the men. Most of the men who assisted in the rescue perished in the attempt. Among them was your husband. From his belongings, and once the vessel’s name was discovered, we ascertained his identity.

  My wife has cleaned and set aside all the property he carried on his person to return to you. We were told by the women who were aboard the ship that the dog, Sailor, was the beloved companion of your husband and so we will guard this precious animal and return him to you, as well.

  It is one of the worst of my duties to send letters such as these, and I come to a quick finish in order to place it on the ferry as soon as possible.

  I remain your servant…

  She was standing, now, the letter clutched to her breast.

  Her own voice, swollen.

  “Ellen!”

  She bent forward, collapsed back on the chair. Her voice came, weaker.

  “Ellen! Ellen!”

  Dog. Gallant and desperate. Body is washed. Cemetery. Enormous breakers crashed. Beam ends. The worst of my…

  Ellen, Margaret, Mary, Flora—rushing from the kitchen, trampling down the stairs. Arms around her waist, breast-tightened cloth, voices, urgent and meaningless as her knees gave way. Falling. Vomit. Cheek pressed to the carpet. Mr. Dougan, smell of tobacco, her head rolling to his tweed vest. “Let her down gently, now. Gently.” A pillow beneath her head. “Holy Mary, Mother of…” Struggling to rise. “No! No! No!” Her own voice again and then blackness sweeping up, pressing down, within it a glowing core, a single point of light. Ocracoke Light, not Hatteras. Not Hatteras. Not Hatteras.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Dougan went to the school with the horse and sleigh to collect Lucy and Maud. He warned them of very bad news, and they went upstairs into their mother’s bedroom and learned that their father was dead.

  George was summoned from Sackville via telegram.

  Simeon’s parents and Josephine’s parents came.

  Ellen bade the housemaids to strive to their utmost. Roast chicken, biscuits, apple pie. Flora flew back and forth from kitchen to dining room, setting out cups and saucers, plates, silverware.

  After nightfall, a firm knock sounded on the door.

  * * *

  —

  “Let me see it.”

  Nathaniel held out his hand. One eye was narrower than the other, as if from years of squinting, with a thickened, drooping lid; his “kind” eye, Azuba called it. The other—held wider, as if in compensation, its expression grim, brooking no nonsense—he levelled at merchants or at workers sent into his orchards. Josephine saw this eye harden, now. She gave him two letters, the most recent one from Simeon, sent from New York, and the lighthouse keeper’s.

  She watched as he read Simeon’s. She saw the moment when he encountered Simeon’s words—I struggle to complete my crew. It is getting harder to find seasoned seamen than in Uncle N’s day. The first mate is experienced but in poor health. The second mate is only nineteen, although willing and honest. I have not yet found a man as capable of navigation as I am myself.

  Nathaniel gripped his mouth. His chest expanded with a long breath.

  George, seated beside him, looked up, and Josephine noted his resemblance to Simeon as well as the difference. His face was the unmarked template of his father’s—square forehead, thin nose—but its expression was habitually worried rather than keen; whereas Simeon had been lanky, athletic, George was stocky. He sat on the edge of his chair gripping his hands, his jaw thrust forward to keep tears from falling. Upon arrival, he had suffered their embraces, unable to speak or look into anyone’s eyes. Later, he’d stared at the floor, pressed his face to windows. Had chosen a seat next to his great-uncle. White-faced, he did not look across at his mother or his sisters.

  Josephine sat in the middle of the chesterfield sofa. Maud, curled on her side, buried her face in her mother’s lap. Lucy sat on the other side, as silent as Josephine, who had become stunned, numb, her eyes turning from George to people picking at the plates of food on their laps, to Mr. Dougan kneeling before the Franklin stove with tears on his cheeks, to Flora setting down a bowl of biscuits—feeling as if she were a stranger, watching people she did not know, wondering at their grief.

  Nathaniel opened the travel-worn envelope from Ocracoke Island and withdrew its letter. His eyes flickered down the page. He had followed Simeon’s progress as cabin boy, second mate, first mate, captain—avidly, as if encouraging a second son. Nathaniel and Azuba’s own son, Bennett—born in Antwerp after a nearly disastrous voyage—had declined a life at sea for a career in law.

  He laid down the letter and stared at the pulse of flame behind the stove
’s window.

  “He would not have mistaken Ocracoke Light for Hatteras Light,” Nathaniel said. “I daresay he…”

  Azuba leaned forward, abruptly; caught Nathaniel’s eye. Her face, like his, was weathered, darkened both from the sun’s brilliance as it beat down upon their clifftop house and the refracted glare of the seas upon which, once, they had travelled together.

  He checked himself.

  “He was at sea far longer than he had expected to be, Josephine. There is no doubt that he ran into storm after storm. In that latitude, winds would have forced him into the Gulf Stream, which runs northeastwards, contrary to his direction. He may have taken sick. Or one of the women might have needed him and his medicine box. No doctor on board, of course. Just for one fatal watch, he might have had no choice but to allow someone else to navigate.”

  He came across to the sofa and went down on one knee. He laid a hand on Maud’s head, the other on Josephine’s hand.

  “The seas off the Outer Banks are shoal-ridden, Josephine. And the winter storms are worse than anything you could possibly imagine.”

  His hand tightened on hers. She looked into his eyes, so close to her own.

  “Think of it like this, my dear. I am certain that he had no choice in the matter. He would have died doing his utmost to save his ship and all the lives on board.”

  With a straitened crew, no choice but to catch some sleep…Was what Nathaniel had been about to say, Josephine thought, detecting a beat of censure. Was he thrown from his bed tangled in blankets as the ship slewed violently into sand? Was his first thought fury at himself?

  She pictured Simeon lifting Sailor to his chest, standing at the rail. His last words, perhaps.

  Go. Good dog.

  * * *

  —

  The mare stood with head low, rain making rivulets in her thick coat, percussive against the carriage’s leather roof. Mr. Dougan stowed satchels and hat boxes. Three days had passed since the arrival of the letter. Simeon’s distraught parents planned to meet her at the station. Together, they would travel by train to North Carolina, where they would fetch Sailor, collect Simeon’s possessions, visit the cemetery and give instructions as to the gravestone.

  Josephine, tearfully, bid Lucy, Maud and George goodbye.

  She watched the house diminish behind her. The mare high-stepped down the lane, broke into a trot on the street.

  Earlier, she had gone into the kitchen to speak to her servants. She did not know how long they would be living under her roof, but this, along with many other issues, she could not consider in full. Grief balanced bewilderment at the incomprehensible fact that she could never chastise Simeon for his foolhardy decision. You could have told that woman you had no crew, she could have found another ship. And other things, things that she would not have said, even if given the chance. How Simeon’s erect, carefree bearing, the smile lines beside his mouth and his teasing eyes would have overridden any misgivings the woman may have had; how she would have ignored her own instincts, trusting the captain.

  Just as Josephine had—in all things.

  * * *

  —

  The maids and Ellen ransacked the house, looking for a will.

  “She remembered him saying something,” Mary said, now, in the attic. “Under something.”

  Ellen was on her knees turning over the contents of a trunk.

  “Why he’d put it in here, now? In with this lot of stuff.”

  She pressed her temples with the heels of her hands.

  “Floorboard, more likely,” Mary said. “My father had a floorboard where he kept his whiskey. Me mam never knew but I did.”

  “Think how many boards there are in this house,” Margaret murmured.

  Flora, tugging out drawers of a dusty bureau, could not speak. All the weeping had unlocked her own grief, returned her to the rain of England, pattering on the thatch, trickling down the windowpane, on the day when Ma’s screams stopped and the midwife came out of the little bedroom and told Flora and Enid that they had a baby brother, but he was dead and so was Ma. Father and mother, stronger than walls and roof, shielding Flora and Enid—guardians of hope and of life’s goodness. Both gone, for Papa had died in an accident at the farm the previous month. She and Enid held each other, too shocked to weep. Women came to the cottage. Through the bedroom door, the sisters glimpsed the women at work: rags dipped in a basin of soapy water, Ma’s arm being lifted, her hair being brushed. Moans and whispers. Men, arriving, with two boxes, one long, one tiny. At the funeral service, they could hear rocks rolling in the river, a hollow sound like the clopping of hooves.

  Hapless, the rocks. Worn smooth as eggs. You could see them when the river was reduced to a stream in August.

  If Enid were here, Flora thought, rummaging in a trunk, I could ask her. Did she remember Papa’s funeral and then Ma’s? At least Maud and Lucy and Josephine had one another, and George, and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and all the people of the town. But I want the funeral here, Josephine had cried, before leaving for Ocracoke. I want the cornet band. I want the procession. I want Simeon buried in our own churchyard. Face, swollen, her cheeks chapped from tears. Her eyes, bloodshot. Staring and not seeing. Handkerchief, twisted in her hands.

  Eat, now, Ellen had coaxed, the morning after the letter’s arrival, setting oatmeal and applesauce on Josephine’s lap as she huddled in bed—eat for your strength, now; and Flora sensed the cook’s tenderness and wondered why she was unmarried and mentioned no children. For days, Ellen insisted on carrying meals to Josephine’s bedroom. Holding the door as the cook staggered beneath a laden tray, Flora had glimpsed Josephine sitting in bed with letters clasped to her breast, like trying to hold an armload of autumn leaves. Her hair down, her dressing gown fallen open.

  * * *

  —

  On Ocracoke Island, the lighthouse keeper’s wife stood in her garden, bonneted and skirt-blown, deadheading roses. Chickens blustered at her feet. Her eyes were deep-set, sad; a thin-lipped mouth warped downwards. Simeon’s father bent, gravely, and shook the woman’s hand.

  “Please give our thanks to your good husband and his crew for saving so many of my son’s sailors and passengers.”

  The woman clutched a handful of crinkled dead roses. “Your son’s body was respected and washed. We saved all we could find for the widow.”

  Josephine could not speak. She stared up at the white-shingled tower with its light that had not saved her husband’s life.

  “You’ll be wanting to have the dog. Sweet thing, it is…”

  She broke off, looking at Josephine, and released rose petals into the wind.

  They followed the woman across the scoured grass. Refusing tea, they waited by the door. She returned with a small wooden box. Sailor pressed past her; seeing Josephine, he began to bark. He ran to her, and she fell to her knees and tried to hold him in her arms but could not. The dog was in a frenzy, whimpering, wagging his tail, licking every piece of exposed flesh he could find.

  They walked back along the dirt street, having elected to stay at the inn. The dog trotted, anxious, at their heels. Simeon’s father carried the box. He and Josephine went up to her room; he set the box on a table by her bed. She did not touch it, waiting until he left. He stopped in the hall to ease the door shut, making only the smallest click.

  She listened to wind in the evergreen oaks, constant as the distant, murderous roar of surf. She heard Sailor, below her window, barking as Simeon’s mother threw a stick for him. Slowly, Josephine lifted the lid of the box. Inside, she found five items: a folding knife with an ivory handle, a pocket watch, the garnet ring she had given Simeon, which he wore on a chain around his neck, a lock of her hair wrapped in a square of ironed cloth, and a mass of swollen paper, dried, bearing the faint traces of her own handwriting. She hung the ring around her neck, tucking it out of sight beneath the crepe m
ourning dress.

  Later, they walked to the beach where his body had been found. From behind her black veil, she watched the waves, building and surging and breaking towards her, like breath that could not be stilled.

  * * *

  —

  The dog searched for Simeon in the Creek Road house. He raced up the stairs, panting. He sniffed under Simeon’s chair, the bedposts, the crack of Simeon’s closet door. He came back downstairs and begged to go out. Josephine stood on the back step, weeping. The dog ran to the barn and pawed at the door.

  A funeral was held.

  The cornet band came to the house.

  The family followed it down the hill to the church.

  * * *

  —

  On a warm Tuesday in the second week of April, Josephine sat in the office of her lawyer, Mr. Eveleigh.

  “We could not find a will,” she said.