That Forgetful Shore

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  “The place is full of undergraduettes, as some people insist on calling them,” she reported to Kit upon her return. “Of course the higher degrees for women are still rare, but if you have the interest and the opportunity, there’s no-one who would be better suited to the chance than you, Mrs. Porter.” She always calls Kit Mrs. Porter, as does everyone at Spencer and, Kit supposes now, people she meets in England will do as well. It seems strange that her brief married life has left such an indelible imprint on her as to change her name, erase the memory of Kit Saunders altogether.

  After landing in Liverpool and taking the train to Oxford, she arrives on a late-summer morning hotter than she’s accustomed to. She stands on the platform of the station in Oxford, two trunks beside her, smelling the air. It tastes and smells different from at home; she is really in another world now.

  Somerville College is like a dream of Oxford, with its brick halls and ivy. Kit, a mature woman with an education and years of teaching behind her, finds it hard not to stare and gawk like a small-town girl on her first outing to the big city. Anything might happen here; she is in a place where dreams can come true. Not just the dream of a higher education, but the dream of a broader, and perhaps even a deeper, life.

  By the time Kit undresses for bed in the tiny room assigned to her, the day seems to have lasted forever. She has met with the Dean, taken dinner in the Hall and been introduced to faculty and fellow students. The majority of them are, of course, girls taking their B.A., but she sat at dinner with four other women who are reading their B.Litt., two a little younger than she and one at least ten years older. Two of them are, like Kit, schoolteachers; the youngest, Miss Pennyweather, has just taken her B.A. and is staying on for further study. She intended to be married after the war, but her fiancé was killed on the Somme.

  “We lost a great many men from my home on the Somme,” Kit says, “at Beaumont-Hamel. At home they call it the July Drive.”

  “Oh, and where is your home?” Miss Pennyweather asks. “Your accent is hard to place – you’re surely not Irish, are you?”

  Kit, who believes she has erased all traces of her accent, explains where she comes from. Miss Pennyweather, despite her recent Bachelor of Arts, seems slightly confused about where Newfoundland is, but the other two women know all about it, and the older woman, Miss Stone, says kindly, “We heard a great deal about the bravery of the Newfoundlanders, during the war years.”

  “They were brave, indeed,” Kit says, and, to get it over with, adds, “My husband was an officer with the Regiment; he fought at Gallipoli, on the Somme, and at Monchy and Gueudecourt.”

  “I’m so sorry, my dear. Was he killed in France?” says Miss Stone.

  “No, he was discharged after an injury in 1918, and died of the ’flu only a few weeks after his discharge.”

  Now they are all feeling sorry for her, shaking their heads – one dark, one blonde, one grey. It can’t be helped; her biography is short and simple, not intended to elicit pity, yet inevitably it will have that effect.

  That night, before sleep, she sits on her bed looking out the window. She wants to write to someone about the day’s adventures, but she has already written to Maggie and to Miss Shaw while on the boat, and mailed those letters upon arriving in Liverpool. The one person Kit really wants to tell the story of her sojourn in England to, the one person who would have burned with envy yet been truly glad for her, has not received a letter from her in nearly two years.

  In that dark lonely time after Ben died, after she drove Triffie away, Kit composed one letter after another to her Posy, and tore them all up. She tried to put Triffie out of her mind, until she saw her again on that last visit to the Point. So strange to get off the train in Bay Roberts and not be met by Triffie, not step at once into that welcoming embrace. Trif attended Kit’s father’s funeral; she dutifully sent food over to the house as did most of the women of the community. She shook Kit’s hand politely at the wake and said, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but Kit could find no words to bridge the gap, and it seemed Triffie had no interest in seeking such words.

  Soon after that visit Triffie’s cousin Betty left Kit’s house to be married, and Kit, though she liked Betty, was relieved to have this last tie severed. Trif is cut off from her; her parents are dead; the house on the Point is sold. Whatever Kit’s future contains, there will be little of the past in it, nothing to remind her of the place she grew up, the people who were once her whole world.

  Kit opens her trunk and finds her going-away gift from Miss Shaw: a leatherbound blank book. Kit has not kept a diary since she was twelve years old: she realizes now that she poured so much reflection into years of letters to Triffie, that she needed no other outlet.

  Now she turns to the first clean page and pauses with her pen above the paper. How to begin? She cannot write “Dear Diary” or “Dear Journal” like a schoolgirl. She sits with pen in hand until the urge to write, “Dear Posy,” passes. Then she begins, without preamble or heading:

  Today I arrived in Oxford, “that sweet city with her dreaming spires.” If the spires are truly dreaming, I cannot tell, but I have been dreaming for years, all my life perhaps. What could be more surely a fulfillment of dreams than to be here, a student at Oxford University? Nothing. Which leaves only one question – how does one live within a dream fulfilled?

  Triffie

  “I SEE THE Church of England minister was here today,” Jacob John says, coming in with an armload of wood for the stove. Trif is putting supper on the table, dishing up beans onto plates Katie has already laid out.

  “Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last,” Trif says. “Katie, get the bread out of the warming oven and get your brother in out of the porch, make him wash his hands.”

  “I’ll go get him,” Jacob John says. He asks nothing more about the minister’s visit; he must have met Reverend Spence on the road.

  Since replacing good old Reverend White, the new minister comes every so often to reason with Triffie, to try to make her see sense and give up on the Holy Spirit, just as his predecessor used to try to make her give up the Sabbath, though Reverend Spence shows far greater fervour than Reverend White ever did in trying to correct her supposed heresies.

  Sunday nights, now, whenever Jacob John can spare her and the pony, Triffie drives over to Clarke’s Beach for the meetings there. Pastor Garrigus, a woman preacher from St. John’s, came to Clarke’s Beach to hold a revival. A congregation has sprung up there of people who, like Triffie, have received the baptism of the Spirit. Now that she’s had a taste of real worship, worship with hands and voices raised as high as they can go, speaking in tongues and dancing in the aisles, she can’t do without it. Hard to confine herself to the staid rhythms of the Prayer Book or the earnest Bible studies at the Adventist Church. Since winter closed in it’s been harder to get to Clarke’s Beach, though two weeks ago she caught a ride in Eliza and Bertha Dawe’s sleigh and stayed over Sunday night with Aunt Orpah Dawe.

  Her association with the Holy Rollers, as Jacob John calls the Pentecostal believers, has caused a bit of talk around the Point, and it certainly seems to trouble Reverend Spence. Reverend White had known Triffie for years and after arguing with her a few times about the Sabbath and the state of the dead, he gave up and accepted her as she was. But this new minister feels an obligation to do something about a woman who helped raise up the Seventh-day Adventist Church and now worships with the Pentecostals, yet still holds her influential position on the Church of England Women’s Association.

  Today he came to explain to her that the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as described in the book of Acts, were only intended for the spreading of the gospel in apostolic times, and were not for the Church today. Triffie gave him back as good as he got – few Anglican ministers can quote Scripture to beat Trif Russell – and eventually he gave up on the Bible study and launched into a diatribe about Miss Garrigus and the other Pentecostals, and the woman minister Miss Guy who was left behind to shepherd the
flock in Clarke’s Beach. His diatribe degenerated into a complaint about how fewer people were coming out to church since the war, which trailed off into a whine about the difficulty of raising money for poor relief. With Christmas approaching people expect the Church to do something for the poor, but the money simply isn’t there.

  “Now, ’tis not that hard, Reverend,” Trif says. “We need something like a sale of work. The children are having their pageant at the school before Christmas – why don’t I talk to Mr. Bishop about putting off a sale the night of the concert? I’m sure he won’t mind, and then I’ll talk to some of the women and see what they can contribute. I’d say a nice few people would buy little things for Christmas gifts, and then we’ll use the money, and maybe some of the goods that don’t get sold, to make up a few boxes for the families that need it.” By the time he left, the minister was calling down blessings on her name, forgetting that he’d come to warn her away from dangerous heresies.

  She may be able to charm the minister, but Aunt Rachel is still angry about her joining the Pentecosts, and poor Aunt Rachel never got over the Adventists. Not to mention, the Adventists are mad at Trif too, now. She still worships with them on a Saturday morning, because the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God and will be until long after Trif Russell is laid in the grave, but a few of her fellow believers have harsh words for her.

  Aunt Hepsy Snow has been barely civil to Triffie since Trif started going over to the meetings in Clarke’s Beach. “What is it now?” she sniffs, when Trif shows up at her door to ask what she can contribute to the sale of work. “Are you preaching a new religion or campaigning for votes for women this week? I never knows what it is with you.”

  “Now, Aunt Hepsy, we may have our differences but that’s no reason we can’t pull together to do the Lord’s work.” Trif explains about the sale.

  “The Lord’s work? How can you be working for the Lord when you’re dabbling in Satan-worship?”

  “Call it what you like, I know the Holy Spirit when it touches me,” Trif says. “But that’s neither here nor there – I’m sure we can both agree that feeding the hungry and clothing the needy is God’s work, can’t we?”

  “And many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do many mighty works in your name,” quotes Aunt Hepsy. “And what will the Lord say, Trif Russell? What will He say to those people?”

  “Depart from me, I never knew ye,” Trif quotes back.

  “Do you want him to say that to you on Judgement Day?”

  “Of course not. Now, can you knit a few of your pairs of fancy mitts for the sale or what? Let’s leave God and the Devil out of it altogether and say we’re doing the right thing for our neighbours in need.”

  Aunt Hepsy she can at least respect, knowing the older woman speaks out of sincere, if misguided, conviction. It’s a different matter with a woman like Clara Snow, who has always been petty-minded. She considers skipping over Clara’s house in her canvas of the Point, but she’s never been one to take the easy way out. She brings Katie and Billy along as a sort of bodyguard when she goes over to the north side to face Clara in her den.

  Katie Grace is doing a dialogue with Clara’s daughter Lydia in the concert. As Triffie sits down at Clara’s kitchen table and her children are absorbed into the noisy crew of Snows, she hears Katie’s voice raised above the rest, ordering Lydia to practise lines with her. Above the din, Triffie explains her errand.

  “You must have some time on your hands, Trif, to be going around stirring up the rest of us to do good works.” Clara hands her a cup of tea with such poor grace that some of it slops into the saucer. “Haven’t you got enough to do with your husband and youngsters and three churches to run?”

  Trif bites back a retort to the effect that there are worse places to go on a Saturday morning than to church. One of the worst-kept secrets on the Point is that Clara Snow goes out to Jabez Badcock’s ramshackle house at the end of the Point on Saturdays when Obadiah Snow is gone cutting and hauling wood. Officially, she goes to clean for Jabez, “but the Mister been inside that place and he tells me there’s precious little cleaning ever got done there,” Aunt Rachel once told Trif, with lowered tones and raised eyebrows.

  Jabez is as much of an odd sock as ever. He lives alone, though there are always rumours about him and other men’s wives, of whom Clara is only the latest. Triffie saw him once at the revival meetings; he was slain in the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and prophesied with great fervour, but never came back. Jabez fishes only when he pleases; he won’t play the fiddle at dances or concerts but will sit for hours playing it on an empty stage head; he’s drunk more often than he’s sober. Triffie can’t see the attraction, but for a woman like Clara, it’s possible there’s some romance to be found in a solitary, dangerous man like Jabez Badcock.

  Clara’s house is tidy, though noisy and crowded. She and Obe have six children. The baby currently squalling in the cot was born in April, nine months after the height of the fishing season; Obadiah Snow went down on the Labrador last summer, though Jabez Badcock did not.

  Triffie does her best to ignore Clara’s jibes and swallow her own dislike of the other woman long enough to get a commitment from Clara for a dozen crocheted doilies for the sale, which is also long enough for Lydia to get tired of practising the dialogue and Katie to stamp off in frustration. Prying Billy loose from the snarl of little boys in the yard, Triffie goes home, reasonably satisfied with the list of contributions she has managed to collect.

  She puts in extra hours knitting and crocheting herself, on top of baking for Christmas, helping the children learn their lines for the pageant, and re-papering the kitchen and parlour. She is worn out by the night of the concert, but sits proudly to hear Billy recite a poem and Katie outshine the other girls in her dialogue. Then she slips out to the other room to set up tables for the sale, listening to the other concert pieces through the open doorway.

  The performers are mostly schoolchildren, but near the end Char Mercer gets up to play the accordion and sing “The Boys from Newfoundland” – hardly a Christmas song, but everyone gives Char, with his wooden leg and his Papist Irish wife, a bit of leeway. He’s well on his way to becoming as good a singer and storyteller as old Uncle Jed was, and he often sings about the War, though he talks about it only to tell funny stories. He never describes the horrors of battle, or speaks of the death of his two best friends.

  The older students continue the patriotic theme by getting up to close the concert with “God Save the King,” and then parents crowd into the room to examine the items they and their neighbours have contributed to the sale. Trif, standing behind the table of fancywork, rejoices in one of her favourite sounds – the solid clink of coins falling into a money box, people contributing to a good cause thanks to her hard work.

  When the crowd departs she’s left to clean up. Reverend Spence thanks her as she hands him the heavy money box. As she sweeps the floor and packs the unsold goods in a box, she hears Jacob John and a few other men in the next room, putting back the desks that have been moved aside for the pageant.

  She doesn’t pay much attention to the men’s conversation till she hears her own name. “You must have your work cut out for you keeping up with Trif,” says Fred Mercer. “She don’t stop, do she? If she’s not getting up a sale of work, sure she’s starting up another church.”

  Triffie hears, as Jacob John must, the implied rebuke in Fred’s joke. Except for ministers, religion is pretty much seen as women’s business in these parts, and it’s certainly not unusual for a woman to be a churchgoer when her man is not, or to be more active in the Church than he is. A good husband is expected to keep his nose of out of his wife’s religious business. But when it comes to her taking up with strange new sects or otherwise making a holy show of herself in public, well, a prudent man should keep a bit of a rein on his wife. Jacob John teases Triffie about her faith as he always has, but he makes no effort to change it.

  “Nah, sure I don�
��t bother her with that, she can get up to whatever old foolishness she wants,” Jacob John says now, confirming her expectations. “The Good Lord got His hands full keeping up with Trif; I don’t suppose He needs my help.”

  The other men laugh, but Obadiah Snow persists. “Even so, b’y, these Holy Rollers are a bit much. I heard the minister had to have a talk to your Triffie, and she still haven’t stopped going over to Clarke’s Beach for their meetings. She’ll be raising up a crowd of them around here next, falling down on the floor and talking gibberish, saying it’s the Holy Spirit. Sure you don’t want the likes of that that going on in your house, do you?”

  The men’s rough laughter is quieter now, the challenge to Jacob John’s authority no longer veiled. What would she do, Trif wonders, if he ordered her to stop going to the Pentecostal meetings? She believes on principle that St. Paul is right and she should be subject to her husband, but in point of fact she’s rarely tested on this. She knows she is less than an ideal wife in so many ways. But she’s never outright disobeyed him – probably because he gives so few orders.

  Out in the classroom, a moment passes before Jacob John replies, and she feels the gathering tension, imagines the men looking at him for his answer. Finally he says, “Well, Obe b’y, here’s how I looks at it. Some women, right, whenever they gets restless, you got to watch out for them. Woman gets restless enough, she’s liable to be up to no good behind your back. But when Trif’s gone out late at night, I knows she’s only down on her knees prayin’. And if she gets restless, she just starts a new church. I ’lows I can live with that.”

  This time there are not chuckles but guffaws. Trif knows she ought to feel sorry for Obadiah Snow – or even for Clara, for Jacob John has said one of the things that’s never said aloud, charged Obe publicly with having a faithless wife. Who knows if Obe might be the kind of man to make Clara suffer in private for that public shame? But what Trif feels is a swell of pride, or maybe gratitude.