That Forgetful Shore

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  Kit finally takes the baby from Trif’s arms and places her in Jacob John’s. “What do you have a mind to call her?” His voice is hoarse, like he’s got a frog in his throat. They have not talked about names, though Jacob John mentioned once that if it was a boy he would like to name it David after his father. With the other baby, the one she lost, they never got as far as thinking about names, and Trif didn’t want to tempt fate this time by naming the baby too soon. She thought Jacob John would be sorry this one wasn’t a boy. But staring at the baby girl now he looks awed, as if can’t believe he’s seeing this tiny living thing that carries his blood and his name.

  Name. “Katherine Grace,” Triffie says, because of course she’s thought of it, even though she hasn’t said it aloud. She and Kit vowed years ago to name their first daughters after each other. She’s kept the name close to her heart, matched with her lost mother’s name, waiting to see if it was a girl and the girl looks like Katherine Grace. And she does; and she is.

  Aunt Rachel lifts her eyebrows at “Grace”; in twenty years she has never spoken her dead sister’s name aloud. Triffie learned it from the family Bible and from the overheard gossip of older women like Aunt Hepsy. But Rachel only nods, and Kit gasps and says, “Oh, really? Thank you!”

  Trif meets Jacob John’s eyes, but he only nods.

  So the baby is christened Katherine Grace, only she isn’t christened, because Triffie puts her foot down. Aunt Rachel, Uncle Albert, Jacob John’s mother and sister all insist she must be christened in the Church of England.

  “No child of mine is getting baptized by no Anglican priest,” Trif says. “Baptism is a sign of a believer choosing to follow Jesus. A baby can’t do that. Katie can’t do that.”

  “Trif, I don’t care what tom-fool religion you got yourself into, you cannot let a child grow up in this world without being baptized,” Aunt Rachel says. “What if, God forbid, He were to take her to Himself? What if she took a fever, or – it don’t bear thinking about, Triffie, but you can’t put the child’s immortal soul in peril.”

  “First, she don’t have an immortal soul, second, there’s nothing magic about a minister pouring a bit of water on her forehead. And third, what kind of poor excuse for a god would damn a baby just because her parents never brought her to a priest to get sprinkled?” Triffie defies Aunt Rachel with more spite than she feels. She can stand up to her own family more easily than to her in-laws, and the tongue-lashing she’s already endured from Jacob John’s mother has worn her down. Not to the point where she’ll ever concede that it’s right to baptize an innocent child who doesn’t know her right hand from her left, but to the point where, if Jacob John decrees the baby will be baptized, she will go along with it. She’ll begrudge it, and she’ll make him pay, but she’ll submit to her husband as the apostle Paul says.

  But Jacob John doesn’t give her the chance to submit. He sits silently by while his mother and sister berate Triffie. When she finally corners him and says, “Are you going to make me baptize this baby?” he only shrugs.

  “Could I make you, if I tried? Have I ever made you do anything?”

  “You made me go down on the Labrador for three years. And I suppose you made me marry you,” Trif points out.

  His usually pleasant face turns grim, and he looks away. “Please yourself,” he said. “About the christening.”

  “What, you don’t care what I do with her?”

  “I think there’s no harm in having a baby christened. It don’t do no damage and for all we knows it might do a bit of good. And it makes people happy. But I don’t care one way or the other. I care about rearing her up good, putting clothes on her back and food on the table, teaching her right from wrong. I don’t care much one way or the other what church pew she sits in nor what words a minister says over her. It don’t matter to me, but it does to you. So it stands to reason it ought to be your decision, not mine.”

  “Then tell your mother and them that, when they goes on at me.”

  Again, he shrugs and turns away. “Your decision, your job to tell them. I’m not getting involved, one way or the other.”

  There’s an Adventist minister in Bay Roberts now, Elder Hubley, and they’re raising money to build a church of their own. Elder Hubley has started up the Sunday night preaching services again, spreading the message, and before Katie Grace came along Trif was out to every one of them, and was face and eyes into the campaign to raise money for building the church. Trif went around canvassing for donations and even organized a sale of work, but the church won’t be built till next spring. Katie Grace’s dedication has to be held in the parlour of Triffie’s house.

  It’s the same kind of service the Army people have; they don’t believe in baptizing babies either, so Triffie has seen this before: the family standing around, passing the baby over to the minister to say a prayer, promising to bring her up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. No holy water; no magic words.

  Aunt Rachel, Uncle Albert and all Jacob John’s family refuse to come. “If it’s not a proper christening, what good is it?” Aunt Rachel asks. From her house, only Will comes to watch Katie’s dedication. The other Advent believers circle around to support her, and for the first and last time, both Kit and Jacob John attend an Adventist service at Triffie’s side.

  When everyone has gone home, Trif sits in the kitchen nursing Katie. Jacob John comes in with an armload of wood and sits down by the stove watching her. Trif hitches up her shawl to better cover the exposed top of her breast as the baby suckles.

  “That was all right,” Jacob John says after a long silence.

  “It was fine. But your mother won’t think so.”

  “No, maybe not. But it’s none of her business.” Jacob John’s hands, usually so busy, rest idle on his knees. After a moment he gets out of his chair and sits next to Trif on the settee. He reaches to stroke Katie’s cheek. The baby is more sleeping than nursing now, her little mouth gone slack on Trif’s nipple, a milk-bubble forming in the corner of her mouth as she breathes. Jacob John touches her face with just one finger. There’s dirt under his fingernail and ground into the creases of his hand.

  “She’s a grand girl,” he says.

  “She’ll be a grand woman,” Trif says. She glances up, suddenly fierce. “I want her to have opportunities – the ones I never had. She’ll do well in school, and if she has the chance to go away, to get more education, I want to make sure she has that. Don’t hold her back.”

  Jacob John’s eyes turn from his daughter to his wife. “Would I do that?” he asks, and Trif realizes she doesn’t even know the answer. “Anyway,” he goes on, his voice regaining its usual saucy lilt, “you’re thinking she’ll be smart like you. What if she got my brains instead? That’d be a tragedy, now wouldn’t it?”

  “She’ll be smart. I can tell. And I just want her to have a chance to use that, not be held back just because she’s a girl or she comes from a fisherman’s family.”

  Katie’s sleepy head has drifted back now, her mouth open, loosing her hold on Trif’s breast. Trif settles the baby more comfortably in the crook of her arm and reaches up with her free hand to pull her blouse over her breast, but Jacob John stops her, lays three fingers on her bare breast as he speaks.

  “She’ll have every opportunity she needs, don’t worry about that,” he says. “But it half sounds to me like you wants her to live your life for you – do the things you never got to do.” His fingers slide down her breast, caressing it. He has never touched her like this in broad daylight, right there in the kitchen, and Trif wants to pull away or swat at his hand. But she doesn’t want to wake her sleeping baby, so she watches, silent, as Jacob John’s forefinger catches a drop of warm milk still clinging to her nipple. His touch, so different from the suck of a baby’s lips, sends a shiver through her.

  “You’re only twenty-two, Trif. Just because you’re married to me and we got a baby, it don’t mean your life is over.” He raises his finger to his mouth and licks her mi
lk off it.

  Kit

  Trinity

  December, 1913

  My dearest Posy,

  As I write this I am trying to picture you with my Namesake, little Katie Grace. How quickly babies grow! When I left home I thought her like a kitten whose eyes had not yet opened – small and wrinkled and really more Asleep than Awake. Now, as your letters tell the tale of her sitting up and looking about, reaching out to grab things, I feel that by the time I return she will be a right little Personage, and though she bears my name and the blood of the One I Hold Dearest, still she will be, in some measure, a stranger to me.

  I wish it were not so, that I could be there to help you care for her, to see her grow and be your Companion throughout this strange new passage in your life, and yet, I am more content here in the town where I was born, than ever I could be in Missing Point. My school at Trinity is a large one, four classrooms for nearly two hundred pupils, and by virtue of my College Degree I find myself in charge of the Eldest Pupils, those preparing for their Primary and Preliminary CHEs. Also, I have all the administrative Duties that pertain to the title of Principal, which are hardly compensated by the additional few dollars in my pay packet, I can assure you!

  Despite the Paper-work, it seems a very easy job in comparison to what I did in Elliston, or what Mr. Bishop did when we were growing up in the Missing Point school. Still, I like to fancy myself someday in a city school, perhaps even at my Alma Mater, Spencer, teaching true Scholars who Thirst for Knowledge – which thirst, I am sad to say, is not exactly an epidemic amongst the High School students of Trinity!

  Kit stops there, laying aside the pen. Her head aches and the lamp hurts her eyes; she is sitting in her classroom, working long past dark. Her pile of personal correspondence waits at her elbow, but she has precious little time for letter writing.

  In addition to Triffie’s latest letter, describing the rapid growth of Katie Grace Russell and Trif’s own bewildered feelings about motherhood – which certainly seems an overwhelming experience – Kit also has a letter from her college chum Maggie Campbell. Maggie, unlike Kit, did not return to her own little island after graduation, but went off instead to the big city of Toronto, where she had a boarding-house room in a slum full of Irish immigrants and a job as the “society reporter” for a newspaper.

  The contrast between my work-life and home-life could not be sharper, as in the morning I attend a society wedding at the St. Charles Hotel, attended by the groom’s millionaire family and the bride’s old society family, which has no real money but a family tree hung with English Lords and Ladies. I do not, of course, get to dine at table, but content myself with leftover scraps of the elegant wedding breakfast while I hastily scribble down notes about the bride’s gown of cream-coloured satin with its court train edged with rose-leaves and pearls, et cetera ad infinitum.

  From there I progress to the newspaper office, where in a smoky room full of middle-aged men who call me “darlin’,” I crouch at my tiny desk and write up the report, to be laid on the desk of Mr. MacSomething. Then through the streets, which grow progressively narrower and meaner as the babble of voices in the streets changes from English to Italian, Greek, German and finally English again, but with an Irish accent so pronounced I can scarce pick out the words. Then I know I have arrived back in Cabbagetown. Yes, it really is called Cabbagetown, and I can smell the vegetable from which the neighbourhood takes its name, as well as many other pungent odours.

  Maggie truly is a wonderful writer; the streets of Toronto come alive under her pen. Kit sits with the two letters, one in either hand, as if weighing them. It’s not Trif’s and Maggie’s friendship she is weighing – Maggie is a dear, and she hopes their friendship will be lifelong, but nothing will ever threaten or compare to the tie, deeper than blood, that she shares with Trif.

  No, it’s the letters’ contents she weighs, their vivid depiction of two different worlds. For Trif, though without Maggie’s journalistic training, is in her own way a vivid writer and a lively correspondent. Her letters sketch the well-known world of Missing Point, the faces and voices left behind. But lately – since her marriage, and especially since Katie’s birth – there is another world revealed in her letters, one which, like the Toronto streets that Maggie describes, grows narrower and meaner with the passing months. It’s hard not to contrast Maggie’s life – the young career woman, forging her way in a man’s world, giddy with the opportunities opening before her – with Triffie’s life, married to a fisherman, caring for a baby, keeping house. Kit senses how poverty, marriage and now motherhood are grinding down Trif’s ambitions.

  As for Kit herself – well, here she is, poised between two worlds. She has a college degree and a job with unusual power and prestige for a woman because of that – but she is also as good as engaged, despite the lack of a ring on her finger. She and Ben have discussed it: he is in his final year of law school; next year he hopes to find an articling position with a firm either in Halifax or St. John’s. Kit will spend these two years teaching, and when his year of articling is finished, they will be married.

  When she thinks of Ben himself – his kindness, his humour, the touch of his fingers on her skin – two years seems far too long to wait. But when she thinks of giving up teaching, putting aside her independence and her career, and becoming a lawyer’s wife – then it feels as if a trap is slowly, slowly closing upon her. She will have opportunities, of course – as Ben Porter’s wife she will be active in whatever community they settle in. She will have church and volunteer societies, but whatever she does will be done as Mrs. Ben Porter, not as Kit Saunders. She will never teach again.

  The next letter is from Miss Shaw, who writes faithfully to dozens of former students.

  Dear Miss Saunders,

  How delighted I am to hear that you are once again a colleague in the teaching profession. I hope your new appointment brings you every happiness. I congratulate you on becoming a Bachelor of Arts. It is indeed heartening to see so many young women taking the path to higher education, and so many more of the professions opening to our Sex.

  As for my own news, I have little enough, I suppose. I continue with the same courses at Spencer; this year, our play is The Merchant of Venice, which is not a tragedy, but as close to one as I shall ever likely get the opportunity to direct. This summer I travelled to Boston with my sister and had the opportunity there to see a stage production of Macbeth. Short of having seen the great Sarah Bernhardt in Hamlet, a privilege that the Lord did not see fit to grant me, I imagine there could be few greater pleasures than to see the Scottish tragedy acted out on stage. You will remember I told you of the superstitious theatre folk who will not say the name of that play aloud – so hard to imagine that one whose mind is immersed in the great works of Shakespeare, could at the same time be so ignorant as to believe that a name carries the power of a curse!

  I hope you continue to read regularly and well. Novels and plays are all very well but it is important to read that which challenges the mind as well. I have recently finished a new collection of essays by Augustine Birrell, which I shall send you, if you wish. I am sure in the outports your opportunities for getting good books are limited. If you let me know your needs I shall be happy to supply any that I can obtain for you.

  Reading this brisk missive in Miss Shaw’s firm, rounded handwriting – her own version of the distinctive script that every schoolgirl and schoolmistress at Spencer College uses – is like opening the window in a stuffy room to allow a bracing breeze in. This, Kit thinks, is the life I was born for. I don’t want what Maggie wants, nor what Trif has, but I could live as Miss Shaw does, surely, surrounded by books and scholars.

  And yet – that brief sentence about going to Boston to see her sister. The sister, as Kit knows from previous letters, is married with grown children and has just had her first grandchild. Miss Shaw, by the path she has chosen in life, has been cast forever in the role of maiden aunt. Has she ever had a lover? Made love, or eve
n kissed a man? Broken her heart, or someone else’s? Little as Kit envies Trif’s closed-in life of domestic duties and diapers, she knows that the barrenness of spinsterhood – even a scholarly, professional spinsterhood – will not fulfill all her needs.

  Underneath the three letters is Ben’s postal, already read.

  Dearest One – I will come for you as soon as the Bruce lands me in Newfoundland on the 19th Dec – or as soon after as I can manage – and whisk you away home with me for the holidays. I won’t write, out here where the curious postmistress can read every word, how very much I long to be with you again.

  Today is the twentieth of December. Last night was the school pageant and today the last day of school. Kit is here tonight only to tidy away the last of her work, to make sure she doesn’t return to disarray in the New Year. Then she will go to her boarding house to pack and wait for Ben’s arrival. When she taught along this stretch of the coast before, in Elliston, she was dependent on the coastal steamers to come and go, but now the railway branch line extends to Bonavista and she hopes the train will bring Ben to her more quickly than a ship could. She hopes he will come tomorrow, though it might be the next day.

  She’s marking the last of a pile of composition books when she hears footsteps in the hall outside her classroom. None of the lower grade teachers is likely to come in today; Kit gets to her feet, startled, to see who is there. Before she can open the door it’s opened from the other side and Ben stands there, smiling.

  “How can you be here already? I just read your postal … I wasn’t expecting you yet –”

  “Never underestimate a young man in love,” Ben says. “Caught an earlier ride down from college to Sydney, so I was able to get an earlier crossing. And here I am – I couldn’t have waited another day.”