Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  Mrs. Bowden made trips down over the hill for vegetables, meat and fish, but Mary and Tessa were only allowed to go as far as the water pump. Mr. Armstrong told them the streets of St. John's were not safe for females at night. Since there was not time to go out by day the girls saw almost nothing of the town. One day Tessa came back from the well and told Mary she'd seen Tim standing in a doorway as if watching for someone, but when she waved and called out he hadn't seemed to know her.

  Mrs. Armstrong spent her time sitting near the parlour fire, working red roses on a set of needlepoint covers for the dining room chairs. She complained constantly of the cold, the lack of good tea and congenial society. Her temper grew even worse when winter came and she discovered that every woman she accounted her social equals had returned to England for the season. She swore that she would die of cold before spring, if she was not poisoned first by the food, which had a rotten taste and was, she said, making her sick.

  Every few days she took up and abandoned new ideas about the running of the house. One week she accused the servants of being thieves. For a short time after this she counted each item of food and watched as Mrs. Bowden locked it away each night. All to no avail. Mrs. Bowden's brown bottle was always full and there was always cheese and bread for the girls to gnaw on at night.

  After the food counting fancy passed, Mrs. Armstrong announced that prayers would be read by the Colonel each morning at six. Then she decided the servants had to take a cold bath every Saturday night. Each practice continued for a week or so until she thought of some other way to make their lives miserable.

  Only the woman's meanness was constant. When Mary's boots fell apart, Mrs. Armstrong made her wear a pair of her husband's castoffs. Although Mary stuffed rags into the toes they were still far too big and flopped up and down, rubbing her heels until they bled. Mary hated her mistress. She learned to choke down rage by imagining what colour the blood would turn the dress Mrs. Armstrong was wearing if she were to drive a knife into the woman.

  Mrs. Armstrong's only pleasure came from the status her husband enjoyed with officers of the fort. Governor and Lady Hamilton having returned to England, she felt it fell to her to “bring a touch of graciousness to the poor men's lives.” To fulfil this duty she gave a dinner party each week.

  On these occasions Mrs. Armstrong was usually the only woman present. When the Armstrongs and their guests sat around the dining room table, which was too grand for the small room, Mrs. Armstrong, with her hair pinned up in elaborate curls, seemed happy, completely unlike the woman who had terrorized the servants all day. She would smile in the candlelight, the tops of her pale breasts pushing up above the dark taffeta whenever she leaned forward to speak to the officers. Tessa and Mary, bringing in food, would be surprised to see how young the woman looked as she sipped wine and flirted with the men in red uniforms.

  “But she wasn't near as pretty as Tessa. Tho' we was half-starved and worked like dogs, Tessa was still pretty, taller than me, she was, with blue eyes and blue-black hair and white skin—not plain and dark like me,” the old woman tells her great-granddaughter.

  Mary and Tessa had to stand in the doorway between kitchen and dining-room waiting for Mrs. Armstrong to indicate when to serve something or take something away. In the kitchen behind the girls, the old woman would be watching pots, laying food out on platters and piling dirty dishes in a corner to wash later. Sometimes there would be one or two soldiers lounging in the kitchen waiting for the officers. They would help keep the fire going.

  The night it happened, Tessa was moving around the table from place to place with a platter of baked hen. One of the young officers, as he served himself from the platter, looked up. “Uncommonly pretty maid you have here, Mrs. Armstrong,” he said, smiling at Tessa.

  Mrs. Armstrong shot Tessa a look of such hatred that Mary, watching from her place in the doorway, felt a chill of fear, like the cold tip of a knife touching her skin, tracing a line around her heart.

  “We was done for, that minute we was done for and I knowed it. I saw it in the look the crow gave Tessa.”

  The guests were barely through the door when Mrs. Armstrong swept into the kitchen. She walked over to Tessa, who stood back on with her arms in a pan of greasy water, grabbed the girl's long hair and yanked her around. She pulled Tessa across the room, screaming that the girl was a dirty little slut and would not spend another night under this roof.

  Mrs. Bowden rushed over and, with a good deal of courage, tried to calm her mistress down, pleading that she was sure the girl meant no harm. With her free hand Mrs. Armstrong struck the cook across the face and continued pulling Tessa towards the door. The enraged woman's screeching grew louder until it filled the room. She called Tessa a wanton whore and said she'd tried to corrupt first her husband and now her guests, that she was not fit to stay in the same house with innocent children. Tessa sobbed and tried to pull away and Mary stood with her back pressed against the wall, struck dumb, knowing nothing could stop what was about to happen.

  Mrs. Armstrong had gotten to the back door and was pushing Tessa, who was wearing only a thin dress, out into the snow, when Mr. Armstrong came into the kitchen asking jovially what the fuss was about. He tried to calm his wife, her voice did drop slightly, but she continued to scream that the girl was not spending another night in her house, that she was going to have her charged with disorderly conduct and insolence.

  “All right, all right my love, you just go on up to bed,” he managed to disentangle his wife's hand from Tessa's hair. “Go on up to bed now, I'll take the girl up to the fort—they'll hold her for the night and we can talk about it in the morning.”

  She was satisfied then and stood back while Mrs. Bowden ran for Tessa's old jacket. Mary, who hadn't moved an inch, watched dumbly as Mrs. Armstrong held the door wide and her husband hurried Tessa through it and into the night.

  “Then the old bitch went up to bed without another word. Me and Mrs. Bowden cleared everything away and there was still no sign of Mister. It must have been hours later, I was kneelin' down in our room with me face pressed up against the window, when I saw him come back to the house by himself.”

  At this point in her story the old woman stops. She gets up, pokes at the fire, walks to the window to stare down at the frozen Cape, comes back to the stove and sits down. Finally she tells Rachel to go on up to bed.

  Next morning when Rachel walks into the kitchen Mary is sitting in the same place, staring at the dead ashes.

  eight

  Sure that her great grandmother is about to die, Rachel tries to fulfil her promises. She puts the journal into the sack and hangs it back on the nail behind Lavinia's door. Then she goes to get her mother. The kitchen fills with women bringing food and advice. The old woman refuses to acknowledge their presence but takes a cup of tea when it is placed in her hands. Sometimes tears roll down her cheeks. It is the tears that frighten them, no one on the Cape can remember ever having seen Mary Bundle cry.

  Then, just after dark on the second day, Mary shakes herself, looks around the crowded kitchen and, as though there has been only a minute's interruption in the narrative, speaks to Rachel: “For mercy's sake, what's the matter with y a, girl? Go get the book. And the rest of ye—get yerselves on home!”

  When at last her children and grandchildren have gone resentfully back to their own houses, Mary keeps Rachel writing all night. Sometimes she pauses to repeat a name, or a sentence: “Make sure you marks it all down—all of it, every word!”

  Mary's jet black eyes peer out from deep sockets, her nose and chin seem to protrude farther and farther as her face shrinks. For the first time, Rachel can see why people are afraid of her Nan.

  Mary had not closed her eyes the night they took Tessa away. She was still slumped down against the window, half frozen, when the cook touched her shoulder and said it was time to go downstairs. For all Tessa was gone, there was still water to be lugged, youngsters to be dressed and breakfast to be gotten for the family.
After breakfast, both Armstrongs left without a word. Dressed up in their Sunday clothes, him wearing his military jacket with a medal pinned onto the breast pocket, they went off to church.

  Everything was just like any other morning—except that Tessa was not there. Mary was beside herself with worry. “We gotta do something” she kept repeating but Mrs. Bowden said all they could do was bide their time and wait.

  The Armstrongs did not return to the house until after dark. And they spoke not a word about Tessa. The next day, no one came near the house and Mary fancied people turned away from her when she went down to the pump. “I think me and Mrs. Bowden both knowed somethin' terrible had happened but we was afraid to bring up Tessa's name to the Armstrongs. Afraid to ask—so afraid I just kept on doin' for them, cleaning up their shit and getting their meals, waitin' on 'em hand and foot.”

  “You knows, maid, how good Christians is forever saying people is meant to be sorry for things they does? Well I tell ya, not many things I done I been sorry for! What I been sorry for all me life is things I never done—'specially what I never done them days after Tessa was took. Many's the time I wished I'd poisoned both Armstrongs durin' them two days.”

  After supper on Monday, just as they were beginning to wash up, there was a tap on the kitchen door. When Mary answered she found Tim Toop standing there. He stepped into the kitchen eyeing the cook warily, “She alright?” he asked Mary.

  Mary nodded and went over to shut the door between the kitchen and the rest of the house. When she turned around Tim was devouring a large slice of meat he'd snatched off the sideboard. “You know what's become of Tessa?” he asked through the food.

  Mary shook her head.

  “Well, far as I can make out the Armstrongs lodged what they calls a complaint of insubordination and disorderly conduct again' her. Said she had to be put in her place—set on havin' her punished and sent back to England on the first ship sailin' in the spring. Anyways, she was brought in before this Lieutenant Emerson—a mean bugger what got a lot to answer for—and will some dark night if he ever ventures out alone.…”

  As Tim talked, Mary put her hands over her eyes and began to rock back and forth. Mrs. Bowden pulled the girl toward her so that her face was resting against the cook's grease-stained apron.

  On the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, Emerson ordered that Tessa be taken to the foot of Garrison Hill and given twenty lashes by the common whipper. Tessa fainted after ten strokes were laid across her naked back. Tim had not seen the whipping, a soldier in the tavern told him it had been freezing cold and they threw water over the girl. When she came to, they continued the whipping. It was terrible to watch, the man said, the cold water froze to her bleeding back and when the lashing began again the caked ice broke, tearing flesh away on the whip.

  Mary started to gag, pulled away from Mrs. Bowden and rushed outside where she vomited in the snow. When she came back to the kitchen, Tim was telling the cook that after the whipping Tessa had been turned away to fend for herself. A soldier took pity on the girl and carried her home to his wife. She was still there, in one of the houses out back of the garrison. He had heard she was in a bad way

  Before Tim finished speaking Mary was pulling him towards the door; but Mrs. Bowden made them wait while she fetched Mary's coat from the attic.

  “You'd best be prepared for the worst. Take this—just in case you needs a bribe,” the cook pushed Mary's shell hairpins and Tessa's brooch, which the girls had hidden in their bed straw, into the pocket of Mary's coat. Then Mrs. Bowden wrapped a loaf of bread and the rest of the meat in a dish cloth: “I'll leave the latch off this door so's you can get back in,” she said and put the food into Tim's hands, “And here,” the good woman turned her back, hoisted up her skirts and pulled the little brown bottle out of her stocking, “take this—it might help the poor child. I wish to God there was more I could do!”

  The weather had turned milder. Outside, the night was thick with fog that blended with the snow turning everything into a grey-white cloud. The surface of the snow was melting and each footstep took Mary ankle-deep in slush. The freezing water splashed up her skirt and stockings so that she was wet to the waist before they got halfway up Garrison Hill.

  She was sick with apprehension and bitterly ashamed for not having gone in search of Tessa. If only she had done something—spoken out, shouted, screamed, kicked, followed Tessa—even if it had not helped she would have felt better. They would have been together. The Armstrongs were going to pay for this. No matter if they killed her, the Armstrongs were going to be sorry for what they did to Tessa. Stumbling along the narrow path behind Tim, Mary promised herself that she would never again suffer in silence.

  Tim led her around the crumbling outer wall of the fort to the back where married soldiers lived. The row of small houses built against the stockade wall were half-buried in snow.

  Tim pounded on the door of the third house they came to, it was opened by a young woman holding a baby in her arms. She let them in without a word and nodded towards the floor where Tessa lay face down on a quilt that had been spread in front of a feeble fire. The girl's back was bare, raw and bloody with flesh hanging away.

  “I did try to clean them cuts, but the poor lass screamed so I hadda' stop—maybe 'twill heal itself for there's naught we can do.” The woman sounded weary, but brightened a little when Tim passed over the package of bread and meat. “There's little enough we could do,” she told Mary, “Harry's only a regular soldier, he's on duty up on the hill and I got the baby to see to. Yesterday I got some milk into the poor maid but today she took nothing. She's burnin' up and moaned for hours before she dropped off to sleep.”

  A huge dog occupied the space between Tessa and the fire. There were no chairs in the room, just a table, a bench and a bed against the wall. Mary and Tim sat on the floor beside the sleeping girl. Mary leaned forward to study her sister's face, her skin looked blue and her breath rasped in her throat. The woman went and lay with her baby on the bed. After a time Tim moved around to sit by the dog where he too fell asleep, his head resting on the big animal.

  Mary stayed crouched by the quilt, never taking her eyes from her sister's face and torn back. She had seen old people die in the workhouse and recognized the grating sound. After an hour or so she thought she heard a change in the breathing.

  She put her face down close to her sister's, “Tessa—'tis Mary—can you hear me? Tess I'm that sorry.”

  Tessa's lids fluttered and she cried out, some word Mary did not understand. Then her eyes opened and she saw Mary: “Mary, Oh Mary he hurt me, he hurt me…”

  “Wait, wait a minute,” Mary searched the room, found a spoon and came back. She poured some of Mrs. Bowden's rum onto the spoon and held it to her sister's lips, but the thick liquid only ran down Tessa's cheek into her hair.

  Tessa was mumbling about being hurt. Mary hunched forward, straining to hear the words, and slowly realized it was not the whipping her sister was trying to tell her about.

  “Don't go back to that house, don't go near to him, Mary,” Tessa was saying over and over. It took a long time for Mary to make sense out of what the dying girl was telling her, but eventually she understood.

  Mr. Armstrong had harmed Tessa. On the night he took her from the kitchen he had dragged her into one of the abandoned powder sheds and raped her before taking her on up to the jail in the fort.

  Tessa seemed to have forgotten the whipping. It was the rape that played on her mind, that, and the need to impress upon Mary that she must not go back to the Armstrong house.

  Weeping, Mary promised. She would never go near the Armstrongs again. Immediately, Tessa became quiet and seemed to sleep. Mary sat on, for an hour, two hours—she was never sure how long—she only knew that sometime during the night there was no longer any sound coming from Tessa. But she still sat watching her sister's face, recalling all the things Tessa had done for her, the times she'd given her food, saved her from beatings, cared for her w
hen she was sick—and what had she ever done for Tessa?

  Sometime later, she became aware that Tim was kneeling beside her, he pulled the quilt up to cover Tessa's body. “Want to say a prayer or somethin'?” he whispered.

  Mary shook her head. She reached over and touched Tessa's hair. Then they stood and went silently across the room and out into the sick white winter night.

  “What'll you do?” Tim's rat face peered at her out of the fog.

  “I don't know.” Tessa had been the only person who ever cared about her. “I don't know,” she said again, “I'd have been dead long ago if 'twasn't for Tessa—I s'pose I'll have to fend for meself.”

  “I s'pose worse comes to worst you could go back to the Armstrongs,” he said.

  She told him about the rape. By the time she finished, her teeth were chattering. It had gotten much colder, the footprints they'd made earlier were frozen into hard ruts and the path down the hill had become a glittering white slide.

  “I promised Tessa I wouldn't go near the Armstrongs. What will happen—to—to her body?”

  “Dunno—don't make much mind, do it? They can't hurt her now, the bastards,” Tim's voice was matter-of-fact even when he swore.

  Mary nodded. No, they couldn't hurt Tessa anymore. She thought of the Armstrongs, right now in their warm beds. They had killed Tessa, yet they still lay safe and secure. Tomorrow they would go about town all dressed in their fur coats with Mrs. Bowden's good breakfast warm inside them, just like Tessa'd never lived. A great red wave of hatred rolled over Mary.

  “Mrs. Bowden told us she'd leave the back door unhooked,” she said.