“She's dead—your daughter died down there—just down on the beach. She died havin' a baby, 'tho she were only a girl herself—not even old as I was when you knocked me up!”
“And your husband, Mrs. Andrews, where is he?” it was the woman who spoke.
“He's dead—he—he were killed, by a, by a…” Mary's voice rasped, “killed by an animal.” She took a deep breath, “'Tisn't hard to die in places like this.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” the woman said.
“We'd best collect that Hutchings man and be off,” Tim put his hand under his wife's elbow and turned her towards the store, “it was—interesting seeing you again, Mrs. Andrews.”
With clumsy haste Mary moved to stand between them and the store. “Not yet. Not yet, ye don't—last time I saw you, Tim Toop, you said you'd have somethin' for me, said when I come back to St. John's you'd help me get passage to England and give me money to settle down with Fanny.”
“That was a long time ago—a lifetime ago. That agreement was made between two people who no longer exist,” Tim's smile was fixed but his eyes were cold again.
“Not so long ago, not my lifetime nor yours, not so long I don't remember you ransackin' the Armstrong house—and what's become of that God damned bastard—did me hex work?”
She waited, he didn't speak and she, striking out in the dark, said, “What ever happened to that watch, the one you stole from Armstrong, the one with the letters and leaves on the back?”
The hand that had started to reach instinctively towards his vest pocket stopped. His wife said, “Timothy!”
And Mary, knowing she had him, pressed on, “I got good friends here, people who can read and write, who knows all about you, Tim Toop (this was not true, she had never mentioned his name) friends who'd be glad to write and let the Governor in St. John's know about that watch of yours, know what kind of man took over Caleb Gosse's business.”
Leaning towards him, hands on hips, chin pointed, Mary waited, determined that this time he would answer her. Instead he took a step forward, hand raised as if he was about to strike her or push her off the wharf.
“I didn't budge,” Mary tells her great-granddaughter proudly, “if he'd laid a hand on me, bejesus I'da killed him!”
But he jerked away at the last minute, stalked over to the edge of the wharf and stood there, staring out to his beautiful ship.
“We should give Mr. Drew a little time to compose himself,” his wife said in her soft, well-bred voice. “Now, my dear, what is it you want? A way out of this place? Maybe passage back to England for you and your children—you do have children?”
Such an idea had not occurred to Mary. She thought about it. She probably could get passage back to England out of them, and maybe something more, enough for a little house perhaps? Go back to England? Where in England? With Ned's children? She tried to remember what England was like but could conjure up no picture of the place outside the workhouse, the graveyard and the street skirting it, could not imagine the shape of England's coastline, the colour of its sea or the smell of its air.
“You know, Rachel, I thought in them days I was well along—but I was still not forty. Young! Why me life wasn't even half over!” The old woman's voice is amazed, wistful.
“You sorry you never went, Nan?” the girl stands and stretches, she has been writing for hours.
“I can't say even now, maybe I shoulda. Tim Toop was well able to do it—passage to England woulda been nothin' to him—he'd of tucked we crowd in among salt cod on one of his ships. I'd have gotten money out of him, too. He was rich as God even then and got a lot richer before he died—the old bugger.”
But Mary had barely considered the idea. What would she do in England? What would Henry, George and Alfred, half savage and not able to read more than their own names, do? They'd all have to start over again, as what? Gypsies? Pickpockets? Like her father, taking care of some rich man's sheep?
“That's what you two'd like, wouldn't ya? Me stowed safe away on t'other side of the ocean—sure he'd have me hove overboard half way across!” she pointed at Tim's back.
He turned around then, came over to his wife and, as charming as if he'd never thought of murder, told Mary to put her cards on the table. She did, and they bartered just as they had in the space under Gosse's cook rooms, snapping at each other like two crackies, measuring each other's strength, spitting out insults. Tim's careful grammar slipped and his wife wandered off to gaze vacantly down the empty beach.
Mary enjoyed it, was sorry when it ended and they made their sober way up to the store.
As they walked in Mr. Matthews, the clerk, was speaking, coming to the end of his patience it seemed, “…the Cape is known to be dangerous, especially for the larger vessels Mr. Drew plans to purchase from now on. It's not practical to discharge and pick up cargo in every flea-bitten outport along the coast. And that's that!”
When he stopped speaking there was silence. No one objected or asked questions. No one moved, not even to look towards the door where Mary stood beside the new owner and his wife.
“A sheep-like bunch you fell in with,” Tim said out of the corner of his mouth. Mary had to agree, wishing that instead of looking down at their boots they would rush up and kick the young dandy's backside.
“They're not half so sheep-like as they looks—someday you might find that out!” she hissed, but did not dare turn to face him for fear he'd see the gleam of victory in her eyes and know she would have settled for less, far less, than he had agreed to.
Leaving his wife and Mary at the back of the room, Timothy Drew walked briskly to the front. Without a word of explanation to Matthews he brushed the young man aside, climbed up on the box and contradicted everything his clerk had said.
“We have decided to continue with Gosse's practice of dropping supplies at Cape Random and, of course, of picking up your fish here. If any of you men want berths to Labrador on Drew vessels you can give Mr. Matthews your name right now, and,” he glanced at Mary, “you will get a fair price from my firm for your fish.”
The clerk looked dumbfounded, the audience bewildered. There was a low murmur of whispered consultation, people smiled uncertainly. Then, hesitantly, the men went up one by one to Mr. Drew, muttering their thanks: “We appreciates it, sir, that we do,” they said, tugging at their caps.
Mrs. Drew walked to the front and whispered something in her husband's ear. He nodded and held up his hand, his stiff authority was all back. “Just remember one thing, you might be hearing the Drew name again—we got sons,” he smiled at his wife. “And one day you'll hear of them running for government. When that time comes I expect your loyalty—I expect you and your families to stand behind the Drews same as we stood behind you.”
Everyone nodded and smiled and there were even a few half embarrassed cheers as he got down from the box.
Before leaving the store, Mr. Matthews wrote out a paper for Mary. It stated that the Cape Random premises formerly belonging to Caleb Gosse now became hers and her heirs' forever, that Drew vessels would continue to call there for fish.
Down on the wharf the men came forward again to tip their caps and nod before the great man and his wife. “God be with ya, missis,” “We appreciates it,” and “We'll not forget what ya done, sir,” they said. Even Thomas Hutchings thanked them and gave a kind of bow to the woman. Jane and Rose clapped and some of the youngsters cheered. The Drews nodded and smiled.
“It's enough to make a cat laugh,” Mary thought, “all of them bein' so meek—and Tim Toop, the little thief, actin' like he was King of England.”
Still, she smiled too, smiled and smiled, and stood hugging the stiff paper inside her sweater, saying over and over to herself, “in perpetuity, in perpetuity.…” It was a grand word. She had young Matthews read the paper out and explain what each word meant, she liked that one especially.
“In perpetuity,” she whispered under her breath, smiling as the skiff carrying Timothy Drew Esq. and his wife m
oved away from the waving people. “In perpetuity!” She didn't care if she never saw the sky over either of them again.
She never did. But in the years that followed, Timothy Drew's name, the names of his sons and grandsons, as well as the names of Drew vessels—the Northern Queen, the Seahorse, the Jubilee and the Northern Pathway—became bywords along the northeast coast. Mary had seen the beginnings of a family empire that would control much of the mercantile and political life of Newfoundland for generations.
Timothy Drew, with the help of his wife's relatives in England, would in twenty years own a huge business. A business based on carrying Newfoundland whale and seal oil and dried salt fish to ports in Spain, Portugal and Great Britain, returning with rope, rum, salt, flour and coal. In a thousand coves and bays, on a hundred tiny islands, thousands of fishermen and their families worked for the Drew empire and depended on Drew vessels for every mouthful of food, every item of clothing. Timothy's descendants became manufacturers, bankers, lawyers and, of course, politicians. In Newfoundland they were considered only a little lower than the angels and a good bit higher than royalty.
But that spring day, standing quietly on the wharf whispering the magic word to herself, Mary Bundle knew nothing of this. Nor, had she known, would she have cared. Never one to brood on what might have been, Mary was overjoyed to know she owned the planks beneath her bare feet, the flakes and the solid wooden store behind her.
thirteen
“I tell ya, girl, that day I watched the Seahorse sail off with Tim Toop I wouldn't ha' called the Queen me aunt! Not one of us wasn't relieved. The grownups looked a bit stunned but the youngsters romped around the wharf like young goats.”
They were safe! They had been reprieved!
“I kept thinkin' how it'd be if I had to leave—what it'd be like to get me things together and start off in another place. How it'd be, leavin' with Josh out there on the point and Joe and Peter buried in back,” Sarah sobbed as she hugged Meg and Anne.
Each woman had been thinking such things, not only of the graves, either, but of the houses, the solid shelves, the gardens and potato cellars, the half-finished church, of the lilac bushes beside their doors and the sight of sun hitting the water off Turr Island. Never had the Cape seemed so dear, so settled, so filled with friends and fine possessions. In the fading light of a spring evening everything around them took on a golden glow. How could such wonders be abandoned, and, if abandoned, how assembled again in this world or the next?
Willie nudged his father, “We done all right, Pop—we done all right, eh?”
Ben looked at his son and grinned. “I 'lows we did—seems to me Drew be a fair man. That young feller, now, that Matthews, he were all there to turf us out before Mr. Drew come and put his foot down.”
The other men nodded, but Meg dried her eyes and frowned at her husband. “I was prayin' the whole time we was up there—prayin' we'd not be left next summer with no one to take the fish we caught—and I allow 'twas the Lord's work we got sove.”
Sarah, Anne and Lizzie were quick to agree, it was a miracle, pure and simple. How else to account for that man's change of heart?
Suddenly they were all talking, Meg and Sarah quoting scripture, Lizzie chastising the twins for lack of manners in front of quality, Jane and Rose describing to Pash each button and ribbon on Mrs. Drew's costume. The men, sheepish as children who find when a candle is lit that the monster is only their father's coat, walked in circles, muttering that they must have misunderstood the clerk fellow from the first—and no wonder—he had that strange townish way of saying his words.
No one saw Thomas go over to Lavinia. Only when he cleared his throat did they notice the two of them standing so close together, arms linked.
“We're going to begin living in the store.” He looked towards Meg as if seeking approval, “Living together—we'll marry as soon as a preacher comes by.”
Meg could hardly believe what she'd heard. What was Thomas saying, right out in front of them all, in front of the children? Mouth agape she looked at him. “What?” she asked.
“Lavinia and me, we're moving into the store to live.”
“Thomas! You're not thinkin' of livin' like man and wife without God's blessing—you mustn't do such a thing!” Meg glanced at Willie and Rose who were also waiting, in separate houses, for the arrival of a minister. “'Tisn't decent, besides bein' a bad example.”
“Why don't we have Charlie marry us all—just like he done.…” Rose's voice came to an abrupt stop, she sputtered and turned crimson, remembering that wedding had been Thomas' and Fanny's.
“Them was special circumstances, Rose Norris—not something we're likely to repeat. There'll be a minister down in a week or so—Reverend Oakley perhaps, when he gets finished in Shamblers Cove,” Meg gave her prospective daughter-in-law a black look before pronouncing judgment. “Ye can wait 'till then, all four of ye, 'specially you Vinnie, after all, you're our teacher. I'm pure mortified you'd consider something so sinful—and to talk so in front of children! If need be well talk after service on Sabbath.”
“We'll not wait, Meg—Thomas and me already waited too long,” Lavinia looked around the circle of faces without embarrassment. “This very day Thomas is going to board off part of the store for us to—to sleep in,” she did have the grace to lower her eyes on the last words.
“Stiff necked she was, 'tho I do say so.” Mary passes her empty cup to Rachel. “Vinnie and me was like sisters in later years but I haves to say, she done what she liked and the devil take the hindmost. Never got held against her somehow, never got bawled out and looked down on, Vinnie didn't.”
That day, however, Mary had not cared. Lavinia and Thomas could have rolled around together right there on the stagehead in front of everyone, for all she was concerned. Euphoric from the success of her shouting match with Tim Toop, confidence seeping into her from the paper she clutched against her chest, Mary was interested in nothing but herself. She had clambered up onto the splitting table, stood above them, scowling down until one-by-one, they noticed her.
“A fine bunch ye are—sheep, just like the man said. Sheep! God's sheep or Drew's sheep—or even Thomas Hutchings' sheep—sheep for anyone,” Mary yelled down at their upturned faces.
Swivelling around to face Thomas, she shouted: “Who the frig you think you are, Thomas Hutchings? Comin' back here like a lord, takin' over like you owns us! And the rest of ye—actin' like we can't get along without him. What did we do when he was gone, tell me that, what did we do? Didn't we get our boats in the water? Didn't we catch fish and make it? Didn't we cull it and count it and send it off to St. John's?”
They had stared up at her in wonder and bewilderment. What was she carrying on about? Her own boys were shamed by their mother's outburst. Jane whispered to Dolph that he must do something, and pushed her husband towards the table on top of which Mary stood.
“Come on down now, come down, Mamma Mary,” Dolph spoke as he would have to a child, or a cat that had climbed up under the wharf.
She slapped his hand away. “Bugger off—and stop callin' me that stunned name—I can't abide it—sounds like some Roman Saint!”
Mary looked around until she found Thomas again, “I minds when I first come here, Alex Brennan asked him over there if I could stay, and he said no. No! This were his place then. Whatever were done, everybody came to he. Them times is gone, Thomas Hutchings! Different times now! Now my man, if you wants to live in the store you gotta come to me—got to ask me—'cause 'tis me owns the store!” Mary screamed the last words waving her paper over their heads. It fluttered out of her hand and she had to make an awkward grab to catch it.
Regaining her balance, she took a deep breath and raved on, pelting years of resentment down on them, reminding them of all she had done to keep the place alive, of every grievance she had ever held, ending with her opinion of their performance in front of Timothy Drew, “…and now ye all stands here like the cats that ate the cream, thinkin' it was yer
prayers, or yer kow-towin', the bo win' and scrapin' and tippin' of caps to them buggers that got ye off. Twarn't! 'Twas me—me who made that old crook say his vessels will keep on comin' in to the Cape.”
She was like the tide, like the moon, like the great unstoppable icebergs that came down the coast. They stood in silent awe—what she said made no sense but was still a marvel. Even the smallest children knew they were witnessing one of Mary Bundle's famous rages, an event they would some day tell their grandchildren about.
Eventually her fury subsided, her gesturing hands dropped, she looked around. Still standing atop the table she beckoned Lavinia over: “Here, you read this to 'em—and keep ahold of it or we'ums all lost.”
Remembering that moment, Mary cackles and closes her eyes to savour it. “Talk about good—my dear 'twas marvellous standin' up like that, watchin' the looks on them faces while Vinnie read the paper out.”
Whatever regrets she had felt when she stood over the sleeping lovers were gone, unimaginable as ice is in summer.
Looking down at the people standing below, Mary remembered others, people who had looked down thus at her: Master Potts sitting on his horse telling Una if he didn't get more work out of her, she and her children would be thrown out of the hut; Mrs. Brockwell scowling at the little girls on the workhouse steps, saying they were lousy and must be scrubbed down; Mr. Armstrong leering at her and Tessa, reaching for them with his putty-like hands; Thomas Hutchings telling her she and her child couldn't come ashore on the Cape. And from some great height, all the “thems” who'd killed Tessa and driven Mary Sprig into hiding, the “thems” who'd starved her, kept her poor and overworked all her life. Even Meg's face came to her, looking down at her and Ned, ordering them out of the house, saying they must forget their bodies and care for their souls.
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