by Anne Degrace
I thought of my mum and dad, inches apart and yelling up a storm.
“Communication is the future,” Mr. Marconi said. He closed up his book of lines and squiggles and pressed his fingers to his eyes like he was tired. “I must be getting to my rooming house. If only I could sleep here —”
I felt the lonely tower around us, Deadman’s Pond not so far away, and shivered. There was the cot with its grey blanket, and I could see he’d slept there more than once already. You’d not get me to stay in such a place as this.
“If I gave you a few more coins,” he continued, “I wonder if you know of anyone who might send up some dinner each day. This way, I can work until dark uninterrupted. And stay if I want to.”
“I might,” I said.
Leaving by and by, I walked out into night so cold I could feel my lungs wanting to close up against it. I looked for stars, because this kind of cold came with a clear night, but there were none.
“My father thought I was good for nothing at all,” Mr. Marconi had said before I left. “I heard my parents arguing many times.”
When I finally did get home, my supper — turnips, potatoes, and cod — was sitting cold at one end of the table. My mum had cleared the other end, and was busy taking in a dress, her foot pumping the treadle of the sewing machine like a pile driver. My dad was nowheres I could see.
I told Mum that Mr. Marconi wanted dinner brought each day, and would pay. I showed her the money he’d gave me. I could see my mother adding up. She was trying to figure out what she could send, and what it would cost, and how much she’d keep for the service. “Does he seem like a man with an appetite?” she asked.
“He’s scrawny as me, almost,” I said. I remembered the teakettle on the small stove. “I never seen him drink anything but tea.”
“Don’t you be telling your father,” she said. She ruffled my hair, though I was near as tall as she. “You’re a good lad, Willie.”
When I went to bed that night, Dad was out still. I heard Mum counting the coins in the English marmalade jar and knew she was tucking it back in the far corner of the pantry, behind the baking soda.
And so it was that I took a pail with two sausages, a quarter of a round of bread, and some soft cheese come from the Kellys’ black-and-white cow they kept out back. Not the cold fishcakes I’d had for breakfast, and as I lugged Dad’s dinnerpail up the long path I could smell the smoky sausages and felt my stomach reach for them, groaning. When I got there, Mr. Marconi, Mr. Kemp, and Mr. Paget were all outside, tying struts onto what looked like a giant kite.
“William! You’re here. Good. Put that by the kettle, please — is the lid tight? The mice are terrible. Then come hold this piece while we fit the strut.”
It felt good to feel useful. Even Mr. Kemp, who never paid me much mind, smiled when I handed him the canvas corner he was reaching for, holding on until I was sure he had it good. Our hands were numb and fumbling with the cold. The wind swept up and over the hill like something wild, the ice in it biting and making it hard to breathe. It picked up the kite and near hauled Mr. Paget off the ground, and the men pulled it back down, laughing and scrambling to pull a strut from the frame and tie it down. We were so busy with it all, Mr. Marconi forgot about the dinner I’d brought. I’d forgot, too, and I couldn’t remember me ever forgetting about eating.
After, we came in to the smell of warm sausage. Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget had brought food packed up by their landlady in town, and Mr. Marconi shared his with me. I wished I could stay there forever, listening to them talk, and time to time Mr. Marconi would say: “Isn’t that right, William?” and I felt warm and part of things.
The next day, I brought dinner and with it a muffler of Dad’s, which he wouldn’t be missing since he hadn’t been home since the fight with Mum. I also took a pair of cod-shuckers, which wouldn’t be missed because we had plenty, the knitting of those being a regular occupation for the widows of St. John’s. The mittens were stiff with the salt, the thumb and forefinger standing up solid beside the pocket for the last three fingers, and I slapped the mitts against my legs to soften them up as I walked up the hill with the dinnerpail.
The three were at it with the kite again when I came up, and they were arguing over something, so with that and the wind they didn’t hear me. I ducked into the room and put the pail in the corner by the stove and then went back out for wood since the fire was near cold, and as I did I saw a figure come ’round the corner. His head was down and one hand on his hat with his thin coat hugged around him, and he was so surely from away that I wanted to laugh. He didn’t see me with his head down under his hat and me behind. He was shouting to the men against the howl of the wind.
“I’m from the Herald !” he yelled as he climbed the hillock to where they was standing. “New York!”
They all came in, their faces red from the wind, because you couldn’t be heard against the weather out there, wild it was. I came in after and stoked up the stove some, taking my time, stalling. New York was exotic, more than England, even, where the signal was supposed to come from, or Italy, which was where Mr. Marconi was from. New York was the real world.
“I understand you are setting up to communicate with a Cunard Liner,” the reporter said. He dropped his pen, fingers numb I guess, and picked it up again.
Mr. Marconi cocked his head.
“The Cunard Line. If you’re successful, this will be a great boon to the shipping industry, especially passenger liners, won’t it?” He tapped his pen on his notebook. “And for the sealers, too, I suppose.” He glanced at me, taking me for the Newfoundlander I was, sure enough. I thought of the sealer last winter got stuck between icebergs, stayed there for days until finally the two icebergs moved, snapping the boat like kindling. Nobody to hear, way out there.
It seemed a good thing if ’twere true, but Mr. Marconi crossed his arms and said: “At present, our intentions are not public.”
The reporter waited there, and we all waited with him, and nobody offered him tea. When he had gone, “Spies,” muttered Mr. Marconi. “William, please bring in some more wood.”
Mr. Marconi sent me home early that day; I trudged down the hill in the half dark, trying not to look t’wards the pond, the sun hardly up at all with the days so short. “Thank your mother for the scarf and the mittens,” Mr. Marconi said as I left. “And tomorrow, see if you can bring a little something for my tea.” I knew what he meant, but I couldn’t ask, liquor being a delicate subject in my house. “I won’t be leaving this hill until we’ve reached our goal,” he said, nodding towards the cot in the corner. It would be a cold night here, I thought.
As I came down the lane with the empty pail banging against my leg, I heard my mum’s voice in the yard. She was bringing in the laundry from the line, piling the longjohns and shirts stiff as cardboard, to let them soften and sag by the fire. In better days we would all watch as the longjohns collapsed like old men, comical.
I heard another voice and knew it to be Mrs. Kelly next door, herself doing the same no doubt, and as I approached on the other side of the fence I could see through the gap their two kerchiefed heads, but they didn’t see me.
“Such a thing it was, there in the window of Miller and Sons,” Mrs. Kelly was saying. “Never seen the like. Wouldn’t any of us like a new dress half as nice?”
“We would. Any of us would deserve it too, for all the work that we do. You knows yourself.” My mum snapped one of her old housedresses flat, then folded it and bent to put it in the basket. She straightened up, and I knew without seeing all of her that she’d put her hands on her hips the way she does. “It’s the lavender I’ve got my eye on.”
I saw Mrs. Kelly lean forward, the two not a cow’s length away from where I stood. “It’s the blue I wants. I’ve got enough saved,” she said, “from the butter and cheese.”
“He lets you keep it?”
“Aye, he does. Made it clear from the front of things. A girl needs her pin money. My Sid, he does want to keep me happy,” and she winked. “What about you? All the extras you do — I’m sorry, Maggie. I wasn’t thinking. How’s he getting on?”
I heard my mum’s sigh. “He’s getting on fine, Lil. Be right as rain in two shakes.”
When I came in, I was relieved to see Dad sitting at the table, a mug of strong tea at his side. He looked at me, his face grey. His hand shook as it reached for the cup. My mum came in and took the pail from me.
“What’s the pail for, b’y?” my dad asked me, but Mum gave me a look and shook her head.
“I, uh —”
“Maggie?” he said. “What’s Willie got my dinnerpail for?”
“William,” she said, not looking at my dad, “tell your father that you’re working for Mr. Marconi, because sure enough somebody in the family needs to earn a living. If my poor dead mother could see —”
“Oh, enough about your mother, woman!”
“— where we’ve got to, after she suffered so, comin over on the boat when she was just a wee thing, and the hunger and the hardship growin up, and then worked so hard to raise us decent —”
“Here she goes. William, better get that dinnerpail to catch the tears, she’ll be weepin ’til we all drown, sure enough.”
“William, tell your father it’s a crying shame when it’s the son needs to feed the father. Tell your father,” she said, slamming the pail on the counter, “tell your father —”
But Dad was out the door, cane banging on the step, the blast of cold air that followed him almost as cold as Mum’s face as she stood with the pail in her hand and the laundry basket on her hip.
“Maybe he’d stay off the bottle if you’d quit yellin,” I said into the thickness of it, surprised I had the courage to speak at all.
“Don’t you talk back to me,” my mother hissed, and she walked into the bedroom and slammed the door.
I sat at the table in the silent house, with the wind howling all around. I drank my father’s tea and the memory came to me of when the mummers came, and the fiddles and the spoons, and my mum and dad danced. Outside, the night grew black as coal.
I WOKE BEFORE dawn, the fire out, my breath fogging the air. I got a blaze going and sat by the fire, warming myself, waiting. My father had come back in the night, now a roll of blankets on a nest of oilskins in the room where the fishing gear mouldered. It was just close enough to the stove, there, for warmth, and not so cold as the back shed, but it was clear he wasn’t braving the bedroom, where I could see through the crack in the door my mum curled tight against herself.
The sun was coming up. I’d have to find Mr. Marconi some dinner on my own, then. I started by looking for a bottle, something to put in Mr. Marconi’s tea. The search warmed me some, and I ate a piece of bread as I did it, with some drippings, cold, but good for the weight of it in my stomach. It was behind the outhouse that I saw the overturned bait box, the broken one, and knew before I even looked beneath it, ’though I was half surprised to find it still there. Perhaps my father thought he’d already drunk it. There was the bottle, quarter full, even, and I tucked it under my coat. Then I put together some more bread and drippings and slathered the pieces with bakeapple jam, pressing the two together. Mum had made a jigs dinner two nights before. I found it in the cold porch, fat congealed on the top. I put some in a jar to warm up on the stove in the room up on the hill. Mum couldn’t have done better, I thought, and I felt proud, later, when I put the pail by the stove, and ’specially proud when I pulled the bottle from my coat and poured some in Mr. Marconi’s tea before he could see the grime on the bottle from where it had lain under the bait box in back of the outhouse.
“Tomorrow,” Mr. Marconi said, wrapping his mittened hands around the cup. I wondered where the other fellas were, and Mr. Marconi must’ve read my mind for he said: “I gave them the day to rest up. It will be a long day tomorrow. We will raise the kite —” he nodded through the wall as if we could see it where it lay under a tarpaulin “— with an aerial attached, and with this we will pick up the signal across the Atlantic. Three dots. Do you know about Morse code, Willie?”
I shook my head. He drew on a piece of paper, a dot and a line, and beside it he drew the letter A. I recognized it, having been to class enough for that, at least. He wrote out all the codes and their letters, explaining as he did, and then he put down a whole lot of dashes and dots.
“What does it say?” he asked. He sipped at his tea, sighing at the warmth of the whisky. “Wait,” he said, while I stared at the marks on the paper. He found a jar and poured me a cup from the pot, then picked up the bottle. “Here,” he said. “To warm you.”
I’d never tasted whisky. It slid down my throat and made a little fire in my stomach. I could see why my dad might like such a thing, and I set the cup down, wary, then picked it up again and sipped. It wasn’t the taste, it was the warmth that held the goodness. A protection against the cold, and I thought of the icy cold in our house these past days. Which came first, I wondered, the cold or the drink? Mr. Marconi interrupted my thoughts.
“What does it say?” he asked again.
I shook my head. They made no sense.
“Look,” he pointed to the first combination, a dot and two dashes. Then he pointed to the letter W. “Match them up.”
I found the letter for each set, but I didn’t recognize them all, and I didn’t want to say. I could tell the W, because I knew it was the first letter of my name. I’d learned that in school. And I could tell the A, because it was the first letter of the alphabet, and the very first one we learned in class. But the others were a mystery. Even after I had pointed to the matching letter, and Mr. Marconi had written the letter under it, I couldn’t tell what it said. He looked at me, waiting. I felt the shame of not knowing how to read, hot and prickly under my skin. Suddenly, it seemed important to keep it secret. And all at once, I knew.
“William,” I said. “It spells William.”
Mr. Marconi clapped his mittened hands, a dull thud. “Now, listen!” he said, and he tapped out my name with a clicker attached to his tabletop concoction of wires and tubes. “Tap, tap-tap,” it went. “William, William,” he said. “Now Guglielmo — my name. Do you know, it is William in English? But Daisy, she called me Guli. That’s shorter, easier to tap out.” He did this, and we listened to the taps while his lips mouthed the letters.
“Who’s Daisy?” I asked.
“My Irish cousin,” he said. “My mother, she is Irish.”
Most of St. John’s was Irish, come during the great famine. My own grandmother came from Ireland. And it came to me that Mr. Marconi wasn’t such a foreigner after all.
“My cousin Daisy believed in me even when my father did not. She was my friend. You have a friend, William?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“I will be your friend,” Mr. Marconi said. I looked over at the bottle, which was almost empty. “Everyone needs a friend,” he said.
I WAS LATE leaving that night, but not because there was much for me to do. “Keep me company,” Mr. Marconi had said, so I sat with him while he wrote in his book. I was almost at the foot of the hill, my head full of letters and symbols, when a figure approached out of the dark. In his hand was a Newfoundland note, more money than I could make in a week from Mr. Marconi, and I stared at it.
“Boy, I understand you are working for Marconi,” the man said. He had a muffler wrapped ’round under his nose, like everybody did in this weather, but it made his voice muffled and scary. His hat was pulled low, and anyways, it was dark. He was like the mummers, impossible to recognize, but there was no fun in this. I thought from his voice that he might have been the reporter fellow, but I couldn’t say for sure.
“I’ll pay you well,” he was sayi
ng.
It was hard to tear my eyes from the note in his hand. “What do you want?”
“He’s not communicating with ships, is he?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” I said. “Honest.”
“You work there every day. You must see what he writes in his logbook — .” He leaned forward and pressed the note into my hand. “If you can get me proof that he’s attempting to receive a wireless signal from England,” he said, “there’s a lot more of this for you.”
I clutched the note. “How?” I asked.
“Read the logbook,” he said. “Copy down the words. And the date. I’ll meet you here tomorrow at this time.”
I didn’t have time to tell him that I couldn’t read the words in Mr. Marconi’s logbook.
WHEN I CAME home my dad was there, sitting in his chair by the stove, shuffling cards. He looked worse than before. “Heard those for’ners been playin cards back of Sam’s,” he said into the thick air. “And losin.”
I looked at my mother, who was cutting potatoes like she was chopping the heads off chickens.
“Tell your father,” she said to me, “he stays sober for a week, maybe he’ll be able to stand straight enough to make an honest livin for five minutes.”
“Tell your mother I’m tryin.”
“Tell your father there’s no money to be losin at the cards.”
“Mr. Marconi? Bettin at Sam’s?” I couldn’t fathom it.
“No, t’other two,” said my dad. “I’m goin tonight.”
I knew he was out of liquor from the edge in his voice. When I come in the yard I’d seen the bait box overturned, the scuffs in the earth where he’d paced and searched.