Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  Mary had stared, too—stared and watched and listened. That was her main occupation those first days on the Cape. She could see from their clothing, from the bareness of Vincent's loft where she and the children slept, how poor the two families were. Knew, by the way they held a bit of bread, savouring the smell and feel of it before putting it into their mouths, that the arrival of the Tern had saved them all from starvation. Despite this, Mary hoped to find something valuable on the Cape, something worth floppin', worth taking back to St. John's.

  “'Tis a poor crowd don't own nothin' worth havin',” Tim used to say but during her first weeks on the Cape, Mary wondered if even Tim would find anything to steal in such a place.

  “I got meself landed in the back of beyond!” she would think, lying in the loft with Fanny, the Vincent children sleeping around her. She would frighten herself imagining what it might be like to stay forever on this fog-shrouded shore, a place inhabited by creatures odder even than her mother. At such times Mary could only get to sleep by thinking about the coins she kept tied in her shimmy and the gold watch Tim Toop held for her in a little bag around his neck, by picturing some vessel that very minute making its way towards the Cape—a vessel that would surely give her passage back to St. John's.

  But maybe the old woman misremembers, maybe her dislike of Cape Random was not so great. She and her child were taken into the Vincent household. No one was cruel, no one questioned her, and, at least during the summer, there was enough to eat.

  And there was certainly enough to do. From dawn to dark no one stopped—men back and forth to the fishing grounds, hauling nets, heaving great piles of slippery, shining cod up onto the wharf—women splitting the fish, washing and salting it, turning and yaffling it. By mid-summer Mary was proud to be able to keep up with Sarah Vincent on the flakes. Every day she learned something new, how much salt to spread, when the fish needed turning or covering, how to render oil out of cod liver, how to gather mussels, cut out cod tongues, dry caplin, dig fish-guts and caplin into the potato garden, how to gut herring, fill their bellies with salt and pack them into barrels. She learned how to make soap and candles, bread and hay and rag mats—even how to mend nets.

  “As time passed on I found meself gettin' more easy—saw them people was no more'n meself—nothin' to be afraid of. The work was no harder than I done in Armstrong's scullery and nobody was bawlin' at me all the time or hittin' me. For all nighttime was black and lonely, 'twas nice to be outdoors in the daytime.”

  Beyond considering her sister Tessa beautiful and herself plain, Mary had never given much thought to her looks. Yet the day she walked ashore from the Tern both Meg and Jennie Andrews had commented on her prettiness. Small and barefooted she'd been, her black hair all uncombed and blowing about in the wind like a gypsy, still wearing Lol's blue gingham dress that had pink flowers embroidered around the hem.

  “A good bit of stuff in that dress—well made, apart from how 'tis brailled together in front,” old Jennie Andrews, who had once traded in second-hand clothing, said.

  “Been a spell, though, since her or the dress seen soap and water,” Meg remarked when they saw the girl close up.

  As soon as she arrived, under the women's direction, Mary's appearance began to change. Lol's castoff dress, declared too grand for the flakes, was washed, mended and carefully packed away to become the official wedding dress for a generation of Cape Random women. From somewhere Meg, Sarah and Jennie dredged up an outfit identical to their own, a shapeless black garment, rusty with age and darned beneath the sleeves, and a big white pinny. The apron was only for the house. Mary was instructed to replace it with a brin bag or a bit of sailcloth when she worked outdoors.

  Although she was raging inside, (“The very nerve of em, takin' me over like I was a youngster—makin' me wash and comb—'tis a pure wonder they didn't scrub me with carbolic!”) she saw the sense of looking like the women around her.

  Even when Meg decreed that she had to put her hair up, Mary remained docile. Meg's smooth coils proved impossible to duplicate in Mary's wiry hair, so they copied Sarah's more careless arrangement, four long braids twisted into a bun and pinned in place with the fan-shaped clips.

  “At least we got rid of the clits and them pins keeps it from streelin' down your back,” Meg said, not satisfied with Mary's hair but agreeing, “'twill do 'til I gets a chance to stitch up a sunbonnet to cover it.”

  Mary was secretly pleased with the effect. The bun and black dress made her look old and respectable. No one would ever guess she was still three years short of twenty or connect her with the dirty pickpocket called Blackie. For the first time in years she felt safe.

  With the feeling of safety came other, more subtle, changes. Instead of setting her gaze at knee level Mary began looking into people's eyes and, after a few weeks, when she knew no one was going to strike her, stopped dodging out of people's way Although she never became a great talker (as she later said, “Ned done enough talkin' for all!”) the Vincents and Andrews soon found that Mary Bundle was not shy about giving her opinion.

  “Young miss over there be some cute—have us all dancin' to her tune before the year's out,” Meg told Jennie one day as they watched Mary instruct Meg's oldest daughter on the best way to stack dry cod. “And to think I allowed first off she were shy!”

  “That twarn't shyness my dear—that were townie sauce. Just bidin' her time 'till she could start orderin' us around.”

  Moving silently around the place, constantly eavesdropping: “I soon found out who was who—that's what you got to do, see!” Mary, who had unknowingly absorbed the Methodist dictum that all stories must have a moral, tells Rachel. “Keep your mouth shut and your legs crossed 'till you finds out who's to be trusted—more 'specially men. Times them first months I pure thought me ears would drop off and me eyes pop out from the strain of findin' things out!”

  For all her curiosity there was much Mary could not discover. She could not find out who these people were, where they came from, why they stayed.

  Strangely familiar and still strangely different the Cape was. Filled with secrets. Sometimes it seemed to Mary she had travelled around the earth only to arrive in the country of her childhood. Digging in the thin soil of the Cape, memories of the hut and dirt garden below Shepton Hills rose unbidden to her mind. Words she had forgotten echo in Sarah Vincent's queer sayings, in her cautions about spirits that live in bogs and woods and ponds. The barefoot children and the way they gobble anything edible reminds Mary of herself and Tessa. She sometimes dreams of conjurors, of pirates and imps, of devils and fawns—and wakes wishing for Tim Toop whose motives are as clear and uncluttered as her own.

  Of all the Cape people, the young woman Lavinia mystified Mary most. “Went around in a daze, traipsin' off with the children. She might ha' thought me a savage but I tell you, I thought she were mental—moon mazed, star crazed or some such thing!”

  “That first day when I saw her coochied down beside Hazel I wondered how she could stand the stink. Hazel was Ned's first wife and she died the very next day. The Andrews were all livin' together in the fish store and soon as I come in I got that sweet, rotting death smell I remembered from the poor-house. Yet Lavinia were right over alongside Hazel, hunched up, pretendin' to write but I could see she were watching' me.”

  Mary expected the young woman to tell on her—to shout out that Fanny was hidden in the store—that Mary Bundle and her baby were jumping ship. She hadn't, though, and after the Tern sailed away Mary came out of her hiding place and passed Lavinia the orange: “Never expected anyone ta do me favours for nothin', I didn't. Vinnie took the orange like she never seen such a thing before—then she divided it up between three of us. Not greedy, I'll say that for her. She fed most all of the orange to Hazel. Strange now I thinks on it—Tim Toop's orange were the last thing the poor mortal et.”

  “For all Lavinia Andrews seemed meek as milk she were contrary regards some things. Never did a tap around the house, no scrubbin'
or cookin' and she only turned up to make fish the scattered time—when the rest of us was beside ourselves with work.”

  “She was a big gangly girl, near the same age as me and she had some kind of grudge against Thomas Hutchings just like I did—so we coulda been friends if she had a mind. But no, she were content enough scribblin' in her book and traipsin' off across the bog with the youngsters. Didn't care where night overtook her, Vinnie didn't!”

  Although no one was friendly, by summer's end Mary knew she had gained their grudging respect. “No more than I should, for hadn't I worked harder, and longer—yes, and better, than any of 'em?”

  The simplicity of fishing, the order of it, the sense of it—catching something wild, something wasted, and turning it into food, without the worry of caring for pigs, or chicken, or sheep (the stupidest creatures God ever put on earth!), without the nitpicking details connected with cooking meals or cleaning houses—appealed to Mary.

  Not that it wasn't hard to start work at dawn and spend the day bent over, turning fish, spreading salt, lugging fish and salt back and forth between store and wharf. By nightfall it would be pure agony to stand upright. The heavy black dress, sweat-soaked and salt-crusted, would be a dead weight around her legs, eyes grew red rimmed and sore, hands bled, feet and ankles became swollen. None of this was enough to keep down the exuberance Mary felt every time she surveyed the dry codfish accumulating in pungent, golden stacks inside Thomas Hutchings' store. Whenever she brought fish into the store she studied the stacks. Head back, turning slowly, she would try to guess how much the labyrinth of stiff, flattened cod was worth.

  Somewhere in her brief childhood, playing jacks in Christchurch graveyard perhaps, Mary had learned to count to ten. She knew two tens made twenty but was vague about what came between. On her fingers she could keep count of ten tens, which she knew made one hundred, before going hopelessly astray.

  Alone in the fish store she often counted, naming every person who worked at the fish: Josh Vincent who fishes out of his own boat along with the Andrews brothers Ned and Ben—though by rights Ben shouldn't be counted for he spends more time working on the Andrews house than fishing. Thomas Hutchings fishes alone in his dumpy little boat. That's four. Then there's the women—Ben's wife Meg and Sarah Vincent work like dogs, and even Old Jennie Andrews puts in a good day on the flakes. Mary decides not to count Lavinia who is usually off gallivantin' with the children. Nor can you count young maids like Annie Vincent, or Meg and Ben's Lizzie. Nor can the older Vincent boys be counted, Young Joe has run off somewhere and Peter is a proper nuisance, hangin' 'round the flakes all day, more a hindrance than a help.

  Mary calculates that the bulk of work on the Cape is being done by Thomas Hutchings, Ned, Ben and Josh, and Meg, Sarah, Jennie and herself. Eight people—one for each finger! Standing in the store room she imagines the great piles of salted cod divided into eight stacks. Although she has no idea what price fish is sold for, she tries to guess what her stack might be worth. How much will it make added to her coins, to the watch Tim Toop is keeping for her?

  “It all come to nothing in the end! My fish and Sarah's, both got counted in with Josh Vincent's. And even he got no money—only marks scratched down in Thomas Hutchings' little book!” After all those years memory of this disappointment is bitter to Mary.

  Rachel nods. The outcome had been perfectly predictable—would be to the youngest child on the Cape. “Sure Nan, anyone'd know them marks was credit for gear and salt and such. And 'tis only proper all hands works together for their own crew!” The girl is hard put to believe that her wise grandmother could ever have been so foolish.

  “Proper is it?” although Mary's voice is gruff she feels sad, “Ya poor stunned mortal! How are ya ever goin' to make out at all, at all?”

  What will become of the child when she's gone? Mary searches for something she can tell her great-granddaughter, something about the world outside the Cape, some scrap of wisdom gleaned from so many years on earth.

  “Too soon old, too late wise! Sarah used to say—if only 'twas true! If age made people wise I'd be able to tell the poor maid things would save her the trouble of makin' the same mistakes I made.”

  This helpless waste of experience vexes Mary so much that even knowing the futility of such action she tries to explain things to the girl: “Ya poor foolish mortal! How you think nuisance-face got his silk ties and them shiny shoes? Where did that big trunk with the brass trim come from? You think someone guv him them things in trade for fish? He bought 'em, girl—bought 'em with money! That's how 'tis in big places—people gets paid in money—in silver and gold—not in numbers squiggled down in a little book!”

  Rachel no longer pretends not to know who nuisance-face is. It has become Mary's accepted title for Stephen—it is easier to hear than his name. Sometimes it even makes the girl smile. “His father owned a shop, Nan—he traded ivory for money.”

  “That's how it is in sensible parts. That's how it should be, too. No one with the sense of a jellyfish should trade for anything but money!”

  “Why didn't you leave, then? Why didn't you go back to some sensible place? You knowed that first fall there was no money to be had here.”

  The question stops the old woman for a minute—then she begins to cackle: “Because by then I'd set me mind on having Thomas Hutchings—tha's why!”

  “Queer a stick as you'd ever meet, Thomas Hutchings were. Deep. Nighttimes all hands'd be listenin' to Ned sing or tell stories and Thomas'd be off by himself in a corner readin', like he grudged us havin' a bit of fun. Close, too—I mind he used to eat supper at the Vincent place and ya wouldn't get a word out of him. Not even Sarah, who could talk the legs off an iron pot, could get anything outta Thomas Hutchings. Still, he were the one had all the say about the fish—say over what was taken from the store, say over what supplies was ordered from St. John's—and he kept account of what was credited to each crew. Gosse paid him ta do it. Paid him real money!”

  Mary had seen the money. By the end of that summer, she knew precisely what every person on the Cape owned. She had rummaged through the Andrews barrels, turning up her nose at their bundles of gaudy cloth and bedraggled costumes. “Never credit anyone'd be foolish enough to lug fousty old gear half 'round the world.”

  Folding the secondhand dress away, she had discovered the hiding place of poor Hazel's boots and the blue china cow—into which Meg had even then stored one coin. Mary had peered under mats, into cups and crawled under flakes. Remembering her mother she had poked at the earth around fireplaces and in the corners of rooms. She had looked carefully through Lavinia's bag, flipped pages of the Ellsworth Ledger, run the bit of green velvet ribbon between her fingers. She searched the Vincent house and the Andrews men's pockets without finding one thing worth having. Only in Thomas Hutchings' store was her diligence rewarded.

  On a shelf above Thomas's desk several books were wedged in place between a rusting tin and a red plush box. Mary had no interest in the books, or in the old tin, but she was sure the red box contained jewels.

  One day, finally alone in the store, Mary had taken down the plush box, held it in her hand, half afraid to open it. What if Thomas Hutchings was really a pirate? Mike Morey perhaps, hiding out on the Cape with his loot? Pirates put curses on their stuff—what might happen to her if she opened the jewels? Even then Mary had known the Cape was filled with secrets: dark things and foolish things, hidden and forgotten things—things that would be harder to find than jewels or money.

  Mary released the silver hasp and the cover popped up. Inside was a string of black beads with a black cross attached—worn, dull looking things. Bitterly disappointed she snapped the box shut, pushed it back on the shelf and lifted down the old tin. It was much heavier than the plush box. She eased off the lid and gasped. Inside were gold and silver coins—more coins than Mary could count—more coins than she could imagine one person owning! She wondered if Thomas Hutchings had counted them. Would he notice if she took one, o
r even if she took two—or three? Maybe she would take them all. She could put stones in the box to make it heavy. How often did Thomas Hutchings look inside?

  She stood beside Thomas Hutchings' desk mulling these questions. Mary can still remember the rich smell coming from the golden stacks of dried cod, the sound of flies buzzing in the dusty sunshine, the glee she felt as she sank her hands into the coins, thinking what they would buy—a house perhaps, or passage to England. Imagine Tim Toop's face when she gets back to St. John's with a bag of gold and silver!

  The day-dream was short lived. Of course Thomas Hutchings had counted the coins! Not only that, he doubtless had the number marked down in his tally book. Mary had barely reached this bleak conclusion when she was jerked out of her reverie by the familiar “thwack” a yaffle of cod makes when it is dropped.

  “And what might you be doin?” Jennie Andrews stalked over to the desk.

  When Mary didn't answer Jennie reached forward, pulled the younger woman's hands out of the box: “One friggin' shillin' be missin' and I'll tell Mr. Hutchings you done it—I'll not have one of my crowd blamed for your thievin', Mary Bundle!” Jennie banged the cover back on the tin and shoved it back beside the books.

  Mary had marched out of the store without a word. For a time she stopped looking through other people's belongings, kept out of Jennie's way and lay awake worrying that the old woman would tell her family or Thomas Hutchings what she'd seen.

  Shamelessly, Mary tells her great-granddaughter all of this, of searching the Cape for something to steal, of being caught with her hand in the money box.

  She does not breathe a word of how she pursued Thomas Hutchings: of the weeks she spent watching his comings and goings, of how she sat beside him at the Vincent table smiling like a fool. She does not tell how the thought of Thomas' tin of money filled her mind day and night: how she had swayed her hips, pinched her cheeks, simpered and tried to catch his eye, how she had even bribed Sarah to cast a spell on Thomas, how lying awake at night she'd considered creeping up to the fish store and slipping into his bed. She does not confess to Rachel that one day she had taken bits of hair Thomas had clipped from his beard, mixed the hair with her own menstrual blood and smeared it under the boards of his bed. Does not say how useless all her efforts had been.