All is Clam

by Hilary MacLeod

  His lost soul – was it with her? Could he reclaim it? Not in any sordid physical way. He’d never wanted a woman for that. Man either. He had many desires, but that wasn’t one of them.

  He turned to Rose and took her hand. They stood silent together for several moments.

  Hand in hand.

  If there was blood on either of them, neither knew, nor cared.

  Alone in the police house, Jamieson thought of the suspects. Buddy, Jamie, Rose, Oliver. They were all innocents, like her. The innocents could not be guilty, no matter what they’d done.

  A flush of warmth rushed through her, straight to her head. She put a hand on the doorframe to steady herself.

  She was not guilty. It was not her fault. She was innocent.

  Jamieson did what she’d never been able to do before. She forgave herself.

  In this new and unexpected state of forgiveness, she was prepared to forgive them, too.

  The innocents. However, whoever, innocent or guilty, victim or suspect, she didn’t care this time.

  Fitz Fitzpatrick’s killer – if there were one – would go free. Free from the law, anyway. From conscience? Probably not. That would be the worst punishment, as she well knew. She had suffered it herself for thirty years.

  Hy was doing a last-minute check to make sure there were enough chairs for the villagers and guests – and space on the sides for wheelchairs and walkers, more of them every year.

  The ticket table was set up with the 50-50 jar, and the Institute women were organizing the food in the kitchen, making pitchers of “juice” and setting the sandwiches, squares, and cookies on plates – for a little lunch after the concert.

  Rose and Jamie arrived, well ahead of time.

  “Jamie insisted on wearing the dress tonight, and I don’t blame her. Gus gave it to her. A dress her daughter never wore.”

  “Gus?” So Gus knew? And hadn’t said?

  Little Jamie grinned. Jamie’s grin. From this girl. Hy looked up, eyes questioning, still not able to fully take it in. Why?

  Rose saw the question in her eyes. “Gus guessed,” she said. “I made her promise not to say anything. Even to you.” There was a half-apology in Rose’s eyes.

  “I was fittin’ her for the Cinderelly dress,” Gus later told Hy. “I spent enough years waitin’ for a girl. I think I know one when I see one.”

  Hy suspected that it was what Gus didn’t see that tipped her off.

  “Jamie herself hasn’t always known. I told her a few years ago. I didn’t want her to be confused.”

  Hy raised her eyebrows, tilted her head. How could Jamie not be confused?

  “She was relieved. She knew there was something, but she didn’t have any experience of other boys and girls.”

  “It was our secret,” said Jamie. “The name doesn’t change, but I did.” She whirled around in the velvet dress. There was a bandage on her left knee, a scrape on her right.

  “I don’t usually like dresses. They’re for sissies. But I like this one.” She twirled around again.

  It began to make sense – why Jamie would want to play the part of a girl at all.

  A clattering of dishes came from the kitchen.

  “Is Gus here?” asked Jamie. “I have to show her.” She dashed off in a very boyish way, taking the steps up to the back kitchen two at a time.

  Rose and Hy watched, then Hy turned to Rose. More, her expression said. I want to know more.

  “It was him,” said Rose. “I had to protect her from him. He – well – I told you. His two daughters – ”

  So that was it.

  “I told him she was a boy. It was easy to fool him. He never changed a diaper in his life.”

  “But how did you hide it from him?”

  “He wasn’t interested in babies.”

  “Just booze.”

  “Yes. Or that’s what I hoped. Isn’t that sick? Hoping. Hoping he wouldn’t be selling a young boy’s favours.”

  “He never saw Jamie naked?”

  “No. Never.”

  “And how long did you think you could keep it up?”

  “Not much longer.”

  Was that a motive for murder?

  “Why did you stay with him?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I had no friends, no family – ”

  “There was Oliver.”

  “I didn’t know him. I knew of him, vaguely. But I’d always been brought up to think him odd.”

  “He is.”

  The hint of a smile broke on Rose’s lips.

  “Yes. Good odd, as it turns out.”

  “And I thought he might be Jamie’s father.”

  Another broad smile. “He might be now.”

  “Do you think – ?”

  “No. Oh, no.” Rose’s hands flew up to her face as the word burst from her mouth.

  Hy didn’t know how to interpret the sudden words and movement. True distress?

  Or an acknowledgement of her own guilt and the certainty that Oliver had nothing to do with Fitz’s death?

  “Why didn’t you just leave him?”

  “I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to do. This was all I could do.”

  “It couldn’t have gone on forever.”

  Rose thrust her chin out.

  “No, it couldn’t, could it?”

  All Hy could think was motive. This was a motive. Was she required to tell Jamieson that Jamie was a girl?

  No.

  Let her find out for herself.

  Jamieson was writing her report on what she referred to as “the incident.” She made every effort to downplay it, because, accident or murder, here it was – another death on her beat. Well two, if you counted Elmira. Three, with Buddy.

  Accident or murder?

  It kept playing in her head.

  Accident or murder?

  She sighed. A deep sigh. Accident. She had ruled it an accident. There was no forensic expert, superior officer of any kind, there wasn’t even Murdo to gainsay her. It had been an accident.

  She stopped typing. Leaned back in the chair. Turned her head toward the window and saw the black, black night, thousands of stars shining in it. A city girl, she had never seen anything like it before. She was mesmerized, her mind emptying of thoughts of every kind, seeing only the bright stars in the dark night, hypnotized by their beauty, paralyzed by her own insignificance, lulled by the rhythmical pounding of the ocean on the shore.

  It had never happened to her before.

  She felt herself being pulled away, taken up, transformed, and when the moment passed, the word was solidly implanted in her brain.

  Accident.

  And she continued to write, all the while thinking: Murder. A nice clean murder. That’s all she wanted.

  But murder was messy. Always messy, as she was finding out.

  And this had been an accident.

  The images of Rose, Jamie, Oliver, and, yes, even Buddy floated in her brain.

  These were not murderers.

  Whatever they might have done.

  Just down the hill, Ian was Skyping his brother Redmond. He’d finally given into Hy’s nagging to get in touch or regret it.

  Hy had made the connection for him, and had left just as Ian was making arrangements to see his brother in the New Year.

  It hadn’t been all warm and fuzzy, as Hy had fantasized. They’d been stiff, formal, but still, what could you expect after so many years? Redmond still recognized Ian, and what he saw he didn’t like. He couldn’t remember why. He couldn’t remember the details of their falling out, but he was holding on to resentment.

  Driving down the hill to pick up Gus, Hy still felt satisfied with herself.

  She’d brought Gus together with Dot. Ian into an uneasy connection with Red
mond. Jamieson? No, she hadn’t managed anything there. Hadn’t tried. Hadn’t had the time.

  And herself?

  The Shores was her family, she realized, even though she was “from away.” Gus, Annabelle, Ian, Ben, and Nathan.

  She wasn’t alone in the world.

  She had family.

  Gus was beaming at the computer monitor when Hy came through the door to pick her up for the Christmas Pageant. She was already dressed in her winter coat and boots, hat, and gloves. She had been for the past hour. Not for the show, but so she wouldn’t freeze whilst speaking to Dot in that cold, frozen place.

  Hy soon saw the reason that Gus was beaming. The screen was filled with a protruding belly, topped off by a Christmas bow.

  Gus pointed at the screen.

  “My granddaughter,” she said proudly. The image shifted, as Dot pulled her sweater over her belly, and angled the screen to frame her face, smiling and glowing.

  “It’s your Christmas gift.”

  “And about time, too,” said Gus, forgetting that what looked to her like a TV screen heard her as well as spoke to her, and transmitted her words halfway across the world.

  “No. Just in time, Ma. It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Suddenly Gus opened her eyes and mouth wide. “It won’t be born tonight.”

  Dot laughed. “No. Not tonight. But soon. Another three months.”

  Gus’s tense body relaxed.

  “You’ll be home by then.” The way Gus said “home” meant The Shores, not any other home Dot might have.

  “No, Ma. I’ll be having the baby here.”

  “There? You can’t have it there.”

  “Why not?”

  “You have to go to the hospital.”

  “You never did.”

  “That was different.”

  “Yes. You weren’t a doctor.’

  That silenced Gus. Hy smiled. Touched her friend’s shoulder.

  “We have to go.”

  “Merry Christmas, Ma. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” Dot clicked off the screen and disappeared in that disturbing way.

  As Hy helped her down the stairs and into the truck, Gus began to soften to the idea.

  A grandchild. Born in Antarctica.

  A double coup. It would be the talk of the village.

  By the time they got to the Hall, Gus had melted.

  A grandchild. A granddaughter. A little girl to love.

  A new life.

  Good tidings of great joy, Gus couldn’t help thinking, though she felt blasphemous. One thing was certain.

  It was the perfect Christmas gift.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The show went on at the Hall with much the same success as the rehearsals. Violet Joudry had a tantrum – onstage. Some, outside the family, considered it the best performance she’d ever given. Her scream was much more pleasant than her torture of the violin; her kicking at the floor, more fluid than her step-dancing attempts.

  The Women’s Institute struggled through Shores Ella with Moira, the Prince, forgetting one of the three lines she had. The fisherman’s boot clearly didn’t fit Jamie – it would have been perfect for one of the ugly sisters. One of the clogger’s shoes flew off into the audience, narrowly missing 102-year-old Lydia Dodd, who was attending her hundredth Christmas celebration at the Hall.

  In the biblical vignette, one of the three wise men, little Tommy Gauthier, his back to the audience, kept scratching his bum. Joseph was chewing gum. The shepherds had towels on their heads and wore bathrobes – one was tartan. Their shepherds’ crooks were hoes.

  It was a disaster. The crowd was thrilled, laughing until they ached.

  It was a triumph – recorded on video by Estelle’s son Lester.

  There was a bit of confusion about Jamie in a dress, but not all the villagers knew the child, and those who did assumed they had just got it wrong. She was clearly a girl. That was clear to Jamieson as well, who chewed on it all evening. Obviously a girl. Why hadn’t anyone told her? What did it mean in the death of Fitzpatrick? Was there a motive for murder behind this new revelation? She could imagine that there was – that more lay behind it that could have driven Jamie – or Rose – to kill. But she had no plan to reopen the case.

  Boy or girl, Jamie could surely play the piano.

  And Tchai had made it there to hear it. Now more woman than man, she wasn’t at all confused by Jamie’s sex change.

  “Not surprised,” she said, then, “Listen.” She spread her bat-wing black sweater sleeves. She closed her eyes and swayed with the music coming out of the – a Christmas Eve miracle? – tuned piano. Out of Jamie’s agile fingers. The Sullivan legacy.

  People stared at the stranger. First, because she was a stranger. Hy remembered the first time she had walked into this Hall and all eyes had been on her.

  But they kept staring at Tchai, because he/she was so unusual.

  “Is that a man or a woman?” Gladys Fraser whispered to her husband Wally. He was hard put to say. Gladys had seemed like a man to him most of their married life.

  “Easier for him…her,” Tchai chuckled as she nudged Hy, both staring at Jamie. “He, she – just had to change costumes, the outerwear, to transform. Unlike me – shots, pills, surgery. Hormone therapy. Psychiatric consultations. Perhaps Jamie will understand me better now, when she comes to me in the New Year.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Tchai’s benevolent smile turned to a frown, her smooth white forehead wrinkled.

  “I think they’re leaving,” Hy explained.

  “But for where? I have friends everywhere. The child must be trained.”

  “You’d better speak to Rose.”

  Hy wondered, briefly, if Tchai would be willing to spend time at the Hall with the untuned piano and the fumbling fingers of the local children, and then decided against it.

  Jamie had been exceptional. Is exceptional.

  And then Hy saw Jamieson staring at the child, from just below the stage. Staring at the child in the dress. She then looked sharply back, her eyes scouring the audience and fixing on Hy at the back of the Hall. The eyes were full of questions.

  Oh, God, thought Hy. I hope she doesn’t reopen the whole thing.

  Hy shrugged. Smiled. Jamieson did not smile back. Hy knew she’d be answering some questions later.

  At intermission, Santa appeared to hand children their gifts from under the tree. It was Oliver, resplendent in a red velvet cape, its hood trimmed with white fur.

  Gladys Fraser gasped. She stopped breathing, emitted some odd sounds. Hy thought she was having a stroke. Gus beamed. The costume reminded her of the pictures of Kris Kringle in the old story books. Very appropriate. Rose Rose, the minister’s wife, wasn’t so sure, especially when Oliver greeted the audience.

  “I am the Magician from the east.”

  The work of the devil? Rose Rose wondered.

  The children didn’t care. They gathered round him, clawing at the cape for their presents. Even Violet Joudry could be bought.

  The performances stumbled to their conclusion, the curtains closed in spurts as little Madeline cranked at the pulley, and Jamie, in her beautiful velvet dress, began to play a medley of Christmas tunes. The villagers sang along all the way through the finale, White Christmas.

  Jamie tinkled a waterfall of notes on the piano and Millie Fraser began to murder “Silent Night.”

  “All is clam,” she sang defiantly. “All is bright.”

  About that, she was right, thought Hy watching Jamie as she slid seamlessly into “O Holy Night.”

  Millie was doing too many curtsies. The curtains closed and Annabelle yanked the pouting child offstage. She thought she saw something glisten on Madeline’s left ring finger. It was a promise ring Billy had given her before th
e show started. They’d promised each other that they wouldn’t let Moira – or his mother – get in the way of a future together. Fuelled by the thought of that promise, little Madeline pulled the curtains open with more than her usual vigour.

  There stood Ian, a Bible in his hands. To Jamie’s accompaniment and the surprise of almost everyone in the Hall, especially Hy, Ian began to read in a rich melodic voice of which Hy had only ever been half-aware.

  Jasmine, on his shoulder, echoed every line, in that same pleasing tenor.

  Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good

  tidings of great joy, which shall be to

  all people.

  For unto you is born this day in

  The city of David…

  A heathen, thought Gus. We all thought he was a heathen. She looked at Hy, her eyes shining, fixed on Ian. And she, a heathen, too. Hy shook her head, but was seduced into the age-old story and the beauty of the words.

  ...a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord…

  Ian continued, the Hall wrapped in silence, unusual silence, carried away on his words. Hy was proud. Proud of him. Proud he was her friend. Big enough to do what mattered, in spite of his personal reservations.

  …Glory to God in the highest, and

  on earth peace, good will toward men.

  Sonorous, serious, unbelievably Ian, the atheist. He and Jasmine read the biblical passage. The Hall was silent, hypnotized by his voice and the ancient words. The only applause was the deafening silence. So silent it was possible to hear the soft sound of snow beginning to fall. They’d had enough snow for a lifetime of Christmases, but slowly, respectfully, without the strangled “O Canada” that usually ended events at the Hall, the villagers filed outside and stood and stared at the sky and the falling snow. Fresh white powder, dusting clean the ugly, dirty remnants of the storm.

  They didn’t know the sky was staring at them, too. The satellite was about to take another photograph – and it would show the same thing – The Shores as a sparkling diamond in a sapphire blue sea, a tiny jewel on earth.

  A star in the East.

  There was an extra sparkle that night that may have been missed by the satellite, but not by the villagers.

  “Look.” Estelle Joudry pointed up Shipwreck Hill.