That Forgetful Shore

by Trudy Morgan-Cole

  “Have a seat, Trif. I got something to put before you,” Skipper Wilf says. “Now you know poor Isaac Morgan who passed away in the spring, he was on the School Board, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I been talking to the minister about filling that place on the Board, trying to think who’d make a good job of it.” In most towns the minister is also chairman of the Church of England School Board, but since the Point shares a minister with Bay Roberts, Skipper Wilf, as the town’s leading merchant, chairs the Board, though he’s expected to take guidance from the clergy. “We wants someone young, not an old fellow like myself or poor Isaac, maybe someone who still got children going up through school. Someone who cares about the school and won’t just be there to warm a bench. I got to thinking, what about your husband? You people have always been ready to take part and help out, and with your Katie starting up as a teacher herself, you’re the kind of family we’d like to see represented on the Board.”

  “Jacob John? On the School Board? Well, I suppose so – I mean, he haven’t got much education himself, but he’s a great believer in his children getting educated,” Trif says. “When he comes back in the fall you’ll have to ask him, I s’pose, and see what he says. I can’t speak for him.”

  “No, no, of course you can’t, but I don’t mind saying, Trif, if we were to get Jacob John on the Board I’d be hoping you would – well, not that you’d speak for him, of course, but that you’d be able to do your part, behind the scenes. I’d be hoping we could have the benefit of your wisdom as well.”

  The retort is so immediate Trif says it before she thinks. “If you want the benefit of my experience, you might do better off to put me on the Board myself.”

  There’s a little silence in the room, broken only by the voices of the women and girls out in the shop. Trif takes a deep breath, inhaling the shop smell of cinnamon and cloves, turpentine and linseed oil. She considers laughing to make Skipper Wilf think she’s joking.

  “Well now, Trif, that’s a new idea, for sure. I ’low it makes some kind of sense, but I don’t mind saying I’ve never heard of a woman sitting on a school board.”

  “I don’t know that I have either, sir,” Trif says. “But we got the vote now, and they do say by the next election there could be a woman in the House of Assembly. I don’t mean to be putting myself on that level, but I’m sure I could work hard and do a lot of good.”

  She wonders if Skipper Wilf has any clue that a few years ago she pulled his daughter-in-law Eliza aside and told her to keep a sharp eye on young Abigail, not to let her alone with Joe Bishop in the classroom or anywhere else. Triffie has kept her promise, spreading the story of the teacher’s misdeeds only to those who most needed to know, but if she were on the School Board she’d be well placed to keep an eye on him, to put limits on his power. And who knows what else she could do? She doesn’t really know how much power the school trustees have, but they must have something to do with making sure the children have enough books and slates and maps. Trif’s heart races as Skipper Wilf leans back in his chair.

  “Well, Trif, you’ve given me something to think about, I don’t mind saying. I’m going to have a word with Reverend Spence, see what he thinks about all this. I don’t say he’s ever heard tell of a woman on the School Board either, but I don’t see how there can be a law against it, now that the women have the vote, like you say. We’ll talk about this again, but don’t mention it until then, all right?”

  Out in the shop, Clara Snow is gossiping with Minnie while young Abigail fills Trif’s order. Clara and Minnie stand in the doorway looking at the Katie and the other young girls, now standing outside in the sun. Clara gestures towards Katie and says to Trif, “Don’t she put you in mind of Kit Saunders?”

  Most people on the Point know that while Kit and Trif were once as close as sisters, they haven’t kept in touch for years. Nobody has ever asked Trif the reason why; only Clara would be tactless enough to bring up Kit’s name in this way. “Named for her, of course, isn’t she?” Clara goes on. “Well, you’d best hope she won’t get too big for her britches and think she’s too good to come home like Kit did.”

  Rumours of Kit’s splendid career have trickled back to the Cape, more slowly in the years since Mr. Saunders died and his wife moved away. The Parsons family, her mother’s relatives, know a little about Kit’s doings and have made a point to post occasional news notes in the Bay Roberts paper trumpeting her accomplishments. “And you never had no clue who helped out with Katie’s school fees?” Minnie asks.

  Trif knows, of course. She has known ever since the letter came from the headmistress at Spencer. She and Jacob John did all they could to scrape up the money for school, but fishing was poor that year and the price of fish even worse, and all the berrypicking in the world couldn’t earn Trif enough extra money to be assured of keeping Katie in school that whole year, much less for another year after that. Katie went off to town with the knowledge that she could be recalled home at any time if the money to pay her board and fees ran out. She could have finished off two years of high school in Bay Roberts, but Katie had her heart set on the fine education she’d get from Spencer and the prospects of becoming a teacher. Trif dreaded bringing her home that Christmas and telling her they couldn’t afford to send her back to town.

  Then came the letter saying that an anonymous donor had volunteered to pay Katherine Russell’s school fees. The headmistress could tell the Russells nothing except that the donor was an old Spencer girl who had a keen interest in helping a hardworking girl from an outport family.

  Trif has written her thank-you letter half a dozen times, but it’s not only the lack of an address that prevents her sending it. Each time, the letter of thanks turns into an angry rant, a tirade against the injustice of a life that allows Kit to play Lady Bountiful while Trif and Jacob John have to scrabble to keep from going further into debt to the merchant. Trif adds each aborted note to the box of unsent letters she’s been saving for years.

  That weekend she and Katie attend church three times, going to the Adventist service, Katie’s favourite, on Saturday morning, then to the Anglican Church on Sunday and over to Clarke’s Beach for the Pentecostal meeting Sunday night. They drop David with Aunt Rachel for the night before driving over to Clarke’s Beach, since even Trif is willing to concede that church three times in a weekend might be a bit hard on a six-year-old. Jacob John says the poor youngster is after growing up in church, to the point that if he sits to the table and somebody passes a plate in front of him he thinks he’s supposed to put collection in it.

  Pastor Garrigus has come from St. John’s to preach, and Trif loves hearing a woman speak the Word. The Adventists have a woman prophet but it’s always men up front preaching, whereas the little Pentecostal congregation in Clarke’s Beach has had as many women pastors as men. There’s a Pentecostal Church starting up in Bay Roberts too, now, but Trif still goes to Clarke’s Beach when she can. Her Billy loves these Sunday night services, got saved when he was just ten and now, at twelve, will stand up and testify as good as anyone. “The Lord’s got His hand on that one,” the Pentecostals often tell Triffie.

  Trif hopes the Lord does have His hand on Billy – not just in the matter of being saved and baptized in the Spirit, but in the matter of protecting him during this, his first summer on the Labrador. Of course Triffie protested his going so young, and of course Jacob John trotted out the old reliable fact that he himself went fishing on the Labrador at eleven, as if that were any kind of a recommendation. Billy never even got to finish the school year, and while he’s not as clever as Katie, he’s an eager student at the subjects he likes, especially Mathematics. Triffie lost that fight, as she knew she would from the time she gave birth to a boy.

  Katie sings along lustily on the hymns and listens attentively to her third sermon of the weekend, but remains in her seat when people stand to testify or kneel at the altar. Her lips are sealed while others around her prophesy and speak in tongues.


  “You don’t take to the Pentecostal service like our Bill does,” Triffie observes on the way home.

  “No – but I don’t mean to judge you, Mama. I’ve just never been able to believe that all their goings-on are what the Scripture means when it talks about the work of the Spirit. I’ve studied up on it a lot,” she adds, knowing that Bible study carries more weight with her mother than anything else. “I started going to the Adventist Church in town this year,” she adds. “I’m thinking I might get baptized.”

  Trif clicks the reins to get the little horse trotting a bit faster over the rutted road that leads back toward the Point. “Well, you got to go where the Lord leads you,” she says. “That’s what I’ve always done. If He wants you in the Adventist Church, that’s where He’ll put you. You likely won’t be able to go on teaching in a Church of England school, though,” she adds.

  “The Adventists have a school of their own in St. John’s,” Katie says. “I don’t want to stay on in Spaniard’s Bay forever – I want to get more education. I’d love to go college.”

  “I’d love that for you, girl,” Trif says. She doesn’t bother stating the obvious, that she has no idea where the money would come from. Thinking of what she’s just said about Katie teaching in Church of England schools, she tells her daughter about her conversation with Skipper Wilf Parsons. His warning not to say a word about it doesn’t apply to Trif’s own family, surely.

  “Oh, you should do it, Mama! It’s high time we had women on school boards, and who on the Point would do a better job than you?”

  Reverend Spence pulls Triffie aside after the service a couple of weeks later and tells her that Skipper Wilf spoke to him about appointing her to the vacant seat on the Board. “I think the idea has some merit. I know you’ve always been a great supporter of our schools, but it is somewhat irregular.”

  “I know there’s never been a woman on the Board before, but the times are changing –”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” says Reverend Spencer. “Very irregular, but we do live in a time of change and upheaval – to be honest, I was thinking more of your standing with the Church. Of course every Board member must be a Church member in good standing, and I know that your own religious affiliations have been – varied.” He pauses, as if hoping Trif will admit she is a heretic and withdraw her name from consideration.

  But now that she’s had the idea, had a couple of weeks to chew it over, Trif isn’t letting go that easily. She could do some good if she were a school trustee – and even if part of it is that, as Clara Snow has been heard to say, Trif Russell isn’t happy unless she’s running something, what’s wrong with that? If God gives you a talent, Trif thinks, whether for making jam or organizing committees, it’s a sin not to use it.

  “I don’t know what would trouble you about that, Reverend,” she says now, looking him square in the face. “Sure I was baptized and confirmed in the Church of England, and I’ve got my backside on the pew every Sunday morning – when have you ever seen me miss a Sunday service?” She says nothing about the other baptisms, her baptism by immersion in a chilly lake with an Adventist pastor, or her baptism in the Holy Spirit at the Pentecostal Assembly. She gambles that in the face of her brazenness Reverend Spencer won’t push it any farther, and sure enough he doesn’t. He only says, “Well, there’s no doubt you have the interest and ability, Mrs. Russell, but it is most unusual. And I did hear a suggestion that Mr. French might be willing to take the seat as well, though he is getting up in years.”

  The conversation trickles away with nothing definite being said. Trif talks of it to no-one but Katie, yet somehow word gets around the Point that there’s talk of Trif Russell getting herself put on the School Board. Plenty of people are shocked at the idea of a woman – especially this particular woman – as a Board member, but all that talk is reported second-hand, few people wanting to confront Trif to her face about it.

  “I told them, I said, why shouldn’t a woman be on the Board?” Trif is surprised to hear this sentiment from Aunt Rachel, who has certainly never made any bold statements about women’s rights and had not much to say one way or another when she was given the vote. But now she says, “It’s always the mothers who send the boys to school when their fathers are trying to get them out in boat as young as eight or nine. Why shouldn’t a mother have some say in her children’s education?”

  “Well, I’ve heard no more about it from Skipper Wilf, nor from the minister since he brought it up to me, but I expects any day now to hear Uncle Joe French got the place,” Trif says. “Where is David, over next door? I should take him back over to our place now.” Katie Grace is back home working in the garden while Triffie weeds Aunt Rachel’s garden and lets her keep an eye on David.

  “Oh, you know it’s never no trouble to look after David,” Aunt Rachel says as the boy comes up the steps onto the front bridge. She reaches out to embrace him. “Leave him here all week – leave him here all summer, sure. He’s the last little chick in my nest, aren’t you sweetheart?”

  David is big enough now to squirm away with a little embarrassment from her kisses. Aunt Rachel is far more sentimental and tender with her grandchildren and Trif’s children than she ever was to her own when they were young, certainly more than she ever was to Triffie. But Ruth and Betty have both gone off to Nova Scotia now with their husbands and children, and Rachel has no-one but David left to spoil.

  Aunt Rachel is over sixty now, and she’s all right as long as Uncle Albert is around, but she seems lost when he’s away. Albert stopped going to the ice this spring, but he reckons he has a few good years left in him fishing on the Labrador, and Trif determines to do everything she can for Aunt Rachel during the long months she’s alone. She’s offered, of course, to bring Rachel over to the south side with her, but Rachel won’t leave her own house, and Trif can hardly blame her for that.

  She’s back at the Mercantile one day in late August, bringing in some blueberries she and Katie and David picked to sell, when she’s again beckoned into the back room. Skipper Wilf looks up from lighting his pipe and gestures again for her to sit down. “Not everyone was happy with it, I’ll tell you the truth,” he says. “But Reverend Spence agreed with me and in the end most of the other Board members did too, though it’s really only the minister’s opinion that counts for much. You’ll be joining us Tuesday evening in the schoolroom, Trif, for your first Board meeting.”

  Trif’s steps are light on the road home that evening. She’s gotten extra credit on her account for the blueberries – one more little safeguard against hunger and want – and she’s won something no woman on the Point, perhaps no woman in Newfoundland, has had before. She has no idea how much power, how much say the School Board really has, but to sit there among those men, to raise a woman’s voice to whatever questions they may discuss, is something to hold her head up about. And Jacob John will be proud of her – and doubtless relieved, too, since she knows he never would have wanted the job.

  After the thrill of being appointed to the Board, the actual Board meetings are something of a letdown. Four old men – the two younger men on the Board are still down on the Labrador – sit about in the schoolroom and smoke; Skipper Wilf reads off lists of resolutions about teachers’ salaries and plans to repair the leaking roof; and the Board members all say Aye. But still, Trif thinks, it’s a step. At her first meeting she makes an effort to restrain herself, to say little and learn much with the thought that she may have more to say at the next meeting.

  She’s disappointed to learn that the Board meets rarely and leaves the running of the school almost entirely to Joe Bishop and the two young women who teach the lower grades. There’s a second meeting in early October when one of the teachers falls sick and has to be replaced, but even then it’s only a matter of lending their approval to a decision already made by the Church.

  The few decisions have all been made and the meeting has been derailed by Uncle Ike Barbour reminiscing about how hard the ol
d schoolmaster used to beat the boys back in his day, when someone knocks at the door. It’s Abigail Parsons with a message for her grandfather. Skipper Wilf goes outside the door for a few moments. When he comes back in, he looks ten years older.

  “We’ve just had a telegram,” he says. “The Sea Rose never made port in Twillingate where she was supposed to, and there was a big storm up there last night.”

  The Sea Rose is one of two schooners owned by the Parsons family at the Labrador fishery this year; Ki Barbour is the captain, and Jacob John, Billy and Uncle Albert are all on board her. Triffie stands up suddenly as the men burst into questions, far more animated than they’ve been throughout the meeting. Skipper Wilf looks at her and says, “You go down and tell your aunt and the Frenches, Trif. We’ll let you all know when we’ve got any more news.”

  At Aunt Rachel’s house, Nellie French from next door is sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of tea, and David is asleep on the settee. Trif wishes for Katie’s calming presence; somehow she thinks having her daughter here would make it easier to tell this terrible news, that the ship carrying all their menfolk may have been lost at sea.

  As soon as Trif gets the words out, Nellie cries, “Oh, no! Oh, God!” and Aunt Rachel moves quickly from her chair. She goes, not to Trif but to her old friend, and the two older women grip each other’s hands. Rachel and Nellie have been next-door neighbours for forty years. They have borne the worst together, losing their two boys in the war, sending their men off to the Labrador every summer and to the ice every winter. There is no news, only wild speculation and women’s grief. As the news spreads, women come to the door. The wives, mothers and daughters of the men on the Sea Rose gather to comfort and encourage one another. A knot of women forms around Rachel’s kitchen table, voices and hands twining as they share stories of old shipwrecks, offer hopeful stories of survival against all odds. There is an empty chair but Trif stands by the door, unable to join the circle. There’s something strengthening in the sharing of sorrow and worry, but Trif has never been able to do it – not with a group like this, rocking back and forth and keening, waiting for news to come in.