That Forgetful Shore

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  That is the high point of the evening; the rest is disappointing, though not disastrous. Appearing at a dinner party, in uniform, seems to be as much effort as Ben can make. He is quiet throughout dinner, making only a few attempts at conversation. He answers questions that are asked of him as briefly as possible, but refuses to be drawn into war stories. “It’s still difficult for him to talk about,” Kit excuses him at one point, when a particularly persistent older man wants to know the story of his Military Cross. She lays a hand gently on Ben’s arm, but he moves away.

  “Glad to be back on the Rock?” someone else asks Ben. “Or do you wish you were still over there, to finish mopping up the Huns?” News of the war is on everyone’s lips tonight; it can only be a matter of weeks or even days before there is peace.

  Ben is silent for a moment, then he says, “No man in his right mind could ever want to go back to the Front.”

  Only one of the men present was overseas; Frank Tuohy, who was wounded at Gallipoli and sent home. He nods in the awkward silence that follows Ben’s words, but no-one else knows where to look.

  Ben clears his throat. “Of course, when I was discharged, the Regiment had been withdrawn – we were sent to Montreuil, to guard General Haig’s headquarters. Some people thought it was quite an honour, but –”

  “Haig!” Frank Tuohy spits, and he and Ben meet each other’s eyes.

  “Oh, now, Haig’s a good man…he’s gotten our boys this far …” Alice’s husband George blusters.

  “Gotten them this far?” The deadness of Ben’s expression changes for the first time: his jaw clenches as he turns on George. “He sent our boys, as you call them – and you’re right, they were boys – into battles that couldn’t be won. Used them as cannon fodder – and for what? For what? A few yards of mud that would be lost again a month later!”

  Again, there’s the little silence, which George Penney breaks. “But surely now, that victory is in sight –” His wife is the one this time to put a hand on her husband’s arm, but it’s a restraining touch, not a comforting one.

  Ben says, “This victory wasn’t won by men like Haig – it was won by our men in the trenches. The men that the generals were willing to throw away.”

  “No more war talk!” Alice says brightly, clapping her hands. “Really, it’s too dreary. I’ve had four years of nothing but war talk, and I’m fed to the gills with it. Surely we can find something more cheerful to discuss?”

  Efforts are made to introduce other topics of conversation, but with the dictum that they cannot talk about the war, the conversation naturally comes back to the ’flu epidemic, which is even less cheerful than the war. The war, at least, shows signs of ending, while the epidemic is getting worse, both here in St. John’s, and abroad.

  “Four new cases confirmed this week,” says Violet Windsor, whose brother is a doctor. “And Miss Dickinson has died – isn’t that tragic? After she was so brave, nursing overseas, to come back here and catch the ’flu while nursing the sick, and die of it? It’s like something in a novel!”

  “You needn’t sound like you relish it so,” says Alice. She was friendly with Ethel Dickinson, who was a few years her elder and went to the Methodist College rather than to Spencer.

  The evening wears on, alternating between ’flu talk and war talk, neither of which does much to lift anyone’s mood. People excuse themselves within an hour after dinner, and after the second couple leaves, Kit sees the mute appeal in Ben’s eyes and nods. They thank Alice and George, and shake hands as the maid brings Ben’s coat and Kit’s wrap.

  “Was that so bad?” she asks as they walk up Military Road.

  “Yes,” Ben says. “It was as bad as I’d imagined. But not,” he adds, “as bad as facing German artillery. Not quite.”

  So they end the evening laughing together, and along with the day’s headlines about the armistice talks, Kit sees the entire day as a positive sign, a sign that things are getting better. It will not be easy, of course. With Ben’s recovery, as with the war, there will be setbacks, but surely victory and peace will come.

  The next day he seems drained, as if the party has taken every ounce of energy. He is reluctant to get out of bed, and Kit encourages him to lie in and rest. She has a troubling thought as she goes downstairs for breakfast – what if he begins taking to his bed day after day, if his nerves get worse instead of better?

  Ben gets up later in the day, but he’s still tired and withdrawn. Kit, wishing she had work to do, reads a novel and writes letters. She will not focus on Ben’s troubles; she will be positive and cheerful.

  She is so fixed on being positive and cheerful that it takes her till the following day to admit that there is more wrong with Ben than nerves or melancholy or shell shock. She has become accustomed to these things, so accustomed that they blind her to the fact that he’s running a fever.

  “It’s nothing,” he insists. His eyes are glazed, and he’s shivering, although he is sitting up in his accustomed chair with a blanket over his shoulders. Shivering, but his skin is hot to the touch. “A touch of cold, I think. You mustn’t worry.”

  “Mustn’t worry? Ben, fifty people have died in St. John’s – and I – I made you go out to a dinner party. A party! Why didn’t you talk sense, make me stay at home?”

  “Katherine. Stop fretting. I’ve been sick before; I had a fever in the trenches one time…I was delirious, saw things that weren’t there – I came through that. I’ll come through – whatever this is.”

  Kit smiles, tries to make herself believe him. But Ben does not get better; by nightfall his fever is higher and, over his protests, she calls a doctor. The few minutes she waits outside the door while the doctor examines Ben seem like time has slowed, as if those moments are as long and vacant as the years she and Ben spent apart, as if another four years will pass and empires rise and fall before the physician steps out of the room and says, “Mrs. Porter –” And then everything speeds up all at once.

  Late that night, in the hospital, Kit tries to understand this strange stretching and squeezing of time. A day ago her worst fear was that Ben would never fully recover, never be able to work, never be himself again. That, she now realizes, was the good time, the time when things were going well, however difficult they might have seemed. Now Ben is in a hospital bed, another statistic, the newest influenza case. When she goes to his bedside and hears the harsh pull of his breath, sees the gray pallor of his skin, she wishes she could go back to the night she received Alice’s note, wishes she could tear it up without ever showing it to Ben.

  She takes his hand. “Be careful,” the nurse says. “You don’t want to expose yourself.”

  Too late for caution. “Ben,” Kit says. “Ben, can you hear me?”

  His eyes flutter open and shift in her direction, and he draws another ragged breath. “No, no, don’t try to talk.” Kit has already seen the effort it costs him. “It’s fine, everything will be fine. You’ll get through this – the doctors will help you, you’ll recover, and then everything will be all right. It doesn’t matter if you – even if you can’t work again, I don’t care. I’m sorry I’ve been so impatient – I really don’t mind …”

  “Hush, Katherine,” he says, and coughs. He looks like he wants to say more, but then just shakes his head.

  Kit, too, wants to say more, to find the charmed words that will reverse the spell of his illness. If she could go back to the doubts and difficulties of a week ago, she would embrace them with the sympathy and courage a good war bride ought to show. It can’t be possible, after all, that he could survive four years of war, live through the hell of the Western Front, only to die in a hospital bed in St. John’s with a racking cough and a raging fever.

  She sits beside him all night, watching his chest rise and fall, as if she can be certain he will keep breathing if she doesn’t take her eyes off him.

  In the morning, when the doctor has finished examining Ben, he turns to Kit and says, “Mrs. Porter, my dear, you’re going
to have to be very brave.”

  But I already was! Kit wants to scream. I was brave for four years, just as I was supposed to be, and now I’m supposed to have my reward. She turns away from the doctor, from her husband in the bed, to look out at the street through a window glass streaked on the outside with dust and dirt. She places a hand against the glass and dimly sees her own reflection press back.

  Triffie

  Missing Point

  November, 1918

  Dearest One,

  How hard it is for me to write this letter, imagining the pain you must feel!! I cannot grasp it, though I have felt the Sting of Loss myself. But I think now that my loss is not to be compared to yours. I felt I had lost a piece of myself when our Will died – for you know I loved him – but you have lost your helpmate, your true love, your soulmate. And what a Cruel Fate – to lose Ben so soon after being reunited! Truly, you have been dealt the hardest blow I could imagine, and I wish with all my heart that I could get on to-morrow’s train and come to St. John’s to be with you, to comfort you as you once did for me.

  Triffie lays down the pen. What is there to say? Words on paper are bald and cold in the face of grief. No letter could have carried her through the dark days after Beaumont-Hamel, and she means it when she says that Kit’s loss is far worse than hers was. To lose a husband you truly loved, one who had finally returned after a long absence, would be unthinkable.

  Trif envies Kit and Ben’s love story; it has all the hallmarks of romance, and though she only met Ben the once, she saw in him every quality she could have wished for in her own ideal mate. If such a love was not to be her own destiny – and clearly it isn’t, she thinks, looking across the room at Jacob John who is already in bed, snoring after a hard day’s work – then she could wish nothing better for her dearest friend. To have Ben home from the war and dead on the day the armistice was signed is unthinkable.

  Worst of all, Kit is not even coming home for Christmas where she might recover from the blow with Trif by her side. She is going to Elliston to spend the holiday with Ben’s family, where his body has been sent on ahead to be buried in the little churchyard there.

  Kit wrote:

  I did not want to think of him lying in the cemetery here in St. John’s, so far from his home and family, especially when I have no idea what my own Future might hold or whether I might someday lie beside him. Some days it seems that consummation is devoutly to be wished, and the sooner the better. Forgive me for saying such things, but I have such Dark Thoughts on these long winter nights, and to whom can I utter them if not to you?

  I wish I could be with you for Christmas and New Year. What a sad New Year this will be, 1919, the year I dreamed would bring the fulfillment of all my long-held hopes and wishes! But I think it would be cruel if I did not accept Captain and Mrs. Porter’s invitation. They are even more crushed than I am, for they never got to see Ben after he returned. At least they have some comfort in the news that Lije has safely completed his service in the Navy and will be home in the new year, but they held out hope of having Ben home for the holiday season. Now I will come alone, and visit him one last time in the graveyard there, and then go on to…to what? I do not Know, and Cannot Imagine.

  “Come New Year’s, I means to go into St. John’s for awhile,” Trif tells Jacob John a few days later.

  “To stay with Kit?”

  “Yes. I think she needs the company, though she never came out and said so.”

  He nods. “How long is awhile?”

  “I don’t know. I thought to take the youngsters with me, not knowing how long I’ll be gone for.”

  He doesn’t say anything for awhile, cooling his porridge, eating another spoonful. “You could leave them here,” he says. “I won’t be at much in January, sure. I might go in the woods again for a few days if need be, but I could leave Katie and Billy with Aunt Rachel if I do. If you brings two youngsters in to Kit’s house the two of you won’t have much peace and quiet. Kit’s not used to young ones in the house like we are – it might wear her out more than give her any comfort.”

  “You’re right, I s’pose, but I didn’t like to leave them with you.” It’s good of him to offer. She won’t stay in town as long if the children are at home, but what time she does have in town she’ll be freer of responsibilities, more able to concentrate on Kit. Kit will be teaching, of course – now that she is a widow she’s been told that her position at Spencer will be open as long as she wants it. They will have evenings and weekends together to talk, to read, to re-knit the bonds between them.

  She will miss the children. Katie, who is five now, looks up at Trif with wide blue eyes on the morning she leaves and says, “But Mama, what will we do without you? Papa can’t make supper.”

  “Papa will have to try his best,” Trif laughs, although she knows Rachel and Ruth will keep them well fed and cared for while she’s away. A fortnight, or three weeks perhaps – she can’t be away from the children longer than that. She takes Billy in her arms for a last kiss, gives him back to Jacob John and kneels to embrace Katie before turning to board the train.

  “What about me? Don’t I get a kiss?” Jacob John says.

  “What, in front of everyone?” Trif takes pity and brushes her lips on the side of his beard.

  Kit is at work when Triffie’s train pulls into the station, but Betty comes to meet her and they hire a cab to take them to Kit’s house. Betty seems so grown-up, moving through the busy St. John’s streets with the confidence of a city girl. Her young man, Frank Dalton, will be home from overseas soon. The soldiers are beginning to return, the survivors of war.

  They reach Kit’s house, which looks both large and crowded since it’s three storeys tall but attached to the houses on either side of it. Trif and Betty sit down for a good chat in the kitchen. When Betty begins to get tea ready, Trif gets up to help, but Betty slaps her hand away. “You’re company now, Trif, and I’m the hired girl. You got to get used to being a lady of leisure while you’re here.”

  The first week is everything Triffie has dreamed of for years – forever, it seems. Every time she and Kit have had a little time together in these last years, Trif has always had the pressure of family and housework and responsibility in the background. Now Kit is the one who has her work to go to each day, while Trif takes the first holiday of her life. She is free to spend her mornings sleeping late, reading, even walking about the neighbourhood as she gets braver.

  When Kit is off work, in their evening and weekend hours, they are truly together, with nothing to do but talk. Betty walks the line between family friend and hired girl neatly; she lingers in the dining room to chat with them for awhile after tea, then excuses herself to do the washing up and makes herself scarce for the rest of the evening, leaving Kit and Triffie to talk alone.

  Nothing is held back in those conversations: Kit pours out all her hurt and pain, the unfairness of losing Ben just when she’d got him back, her feeling of being lost and adrift. “I always thought I loved being independent, working, being my own mistress,” Kit admits. “I loved it all through the war years, even while I missed Ben. I worried how I’d get used to being just a wife, giving up all that freedom, once he came home. Now I’ve got nothing but freedom ahead of me – years and years of it – and I wake up in the morning and think, ‘What am I going to do? What’s it all for?’”

  Trif nods. “Of course,” she said. “Before, you had a purpose. You knew what it was all going towards. But now –”

  “Exactly. But now.” Sometimes they don’t even need words, things are so well understood between them.

  Ten days into Trif’s visit she suggests the possibility of taking the Thursday train to Bay Roberts. It has been a good visit – not long enough, of course, but how much time could ever be enough to spend with her dearest friend, her other self? She wants to stay longer, but is afraid it will be too hard on Jacob John and the children.

  “You’ve never been away from them before, and you probably won
’t again for years,” Kit says. “I won’t keep you here if you really feel you ought to go, but …”

  “I don’t want to outstay my welcome …” Trif offers the one objection she knows for certain will be overridden.

  As, indeed, it is. Kit throws her arms around Triffie. “Outstay your welcome! As if you could!! Do you know how huge, how empty, this house will seem when you’re gone? I have a lifetime of empty rooms and empty halls ahead of me, Posy – don’t make it start any sooner than it has to. I mustn’t be selfish, but …”

  So they both, selfishly, decide that Trif will stay another fortnight. So often in later years Trif will look back at that decision, will wonder how things might have been different if she had gone home ten days after she came to St. John’s. So much would have been different: so much lost; so much saved. At the time it seems the only people who could be hurt are Jacob John and the children, and her family will make sure none of them starve. Instead of bringing Triffie to Missing Point, the train brings a letter saying she has decided to stay a little longer.

  On Saturday, Trif seeks out the Seventh-day Adventist Church and worships there. It’s lovely to worship with fellow believers; good to have a few more voices to join in the Advent hymns, too, though here, in this unfamiliar setting, Triffie can’t help but reflect that the stirring lyrics about the Lord’s coming sound a little flat now, inspire her less than they used to.

  “The truth is,” she admits to Kit that evening, “when I came into the Adventist faith, it never crossed my mind I’d still be sitting here ten years later. They talked about it like Jesus was coming the day after tomorrow.”

  “Well, you know I never put any stock in all your prophecies,” Kit says. “No offense meant, of course, but I always felt you were too clever to believe all that, Posy.” She pours out tea for them both, and Triffie wonders why, when people say “No offense meant,” they invariably go on to offend.