Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  They will track the Andrews family back, remembering Rachel's son who was Selina's husband. A few of them may even know that Stephen Andrews' father had been a Vincent—the handsome, doomed young man who had briefly visited Cape Random. They will recall the years Rachel spent in the States and no doubt speculate on what she had done there that has let her live in comfort for so long. In kitchens all around the shore people are eating late suppers and mulling over the details of the old woman's life. Some of them will mention Lavinia—the woman from town—David Andrews' daughter. It pleases Lav to think of them in their shiny kitchens, saying her name, her father's name.

  Still, she is glad to be alone in the little tent. Unpacking the knapsack she sees that she has forgotten the sleeping bag. Will it get cold later? She tries to calculate the distance from here to the car and decides it is much too far to go and be back by dark. Never mind, she will make do with the parka and sweater tonight. If she wants to stay another night she can get the sleeping bag tomorrow.

  Sitting cross-legged just inside the tent flap, she eats bread and cheese and drinks the last of the hot coffee, watching the sand and water change colour, She has had a romantic notion of reading the journal out here on the Cape but by the time she opens the book it is far too dark to make out the faded script. She returns the journal to the knapsack, which she is using as a pillow, and lies back, thinking about the day, about Selina and her sons, about Rachel Andrews.

  During one phone call Lav had dared to asked Rachel how old she was when she left the Cape.

  “Old?” the gravelly voice croaked over the word as if she'd never heard it before. Then she relented a little, “I was thirty-eight, maid. I thought about it for years but it wasn't until my parents were dead and gone and Stephen over twenty and teaching school that I got up nerve to leave.”

  And that was the only personal information she had gotten out of Rachel, who had been more interested in the present than the past. Wars and rumours of wars, food shortages anywhere in the world, trade and boundaries—all concerned the old woman. But her greatest worry was for the boys and girls, “Gallivanting up and down the road all hours of the night.”

  It was the danger, she said, that bothered her. “Imagine in this day and age, walking right out on the road without a sidewalk or streetlight!”

  But really, Lav thought, it was not the danger of traffic that concerned the old woman. She had other fears. Rachel knew—who better?—about traps nature lay for the young on warm summer evenings.

  Nature could be outfoxed only by education—Rachel Andrews had not said this, but she had thought it. “What will become of them? What can they do in this world or the next?” she would ask of the teen-agers sauntering up and down in front of her window. She had been delighted to discover that Lav had a Ph.D., “Well now, think of that! That makes four in the Andrews family—five when Vickie's young Stephen gets his finished!” Rachel could, and did, ream off the academic status, not only of her own descendants, but of every descendant of her maternal grandparents. Toma Hutchings and Comfort Vincent, she declared, “were both smart as tacks and would be university teachers if they were alive today!”

  Lav falls asleep, smiling, recalling the old woman's litany of degrees.

  She sleeps and dreams, not of Rachel, not of the Cape, but of salmon. Of the great rainbow-coloured fish that swims inside a net, circling and circling in a space that grows always smaller. The net closes, the bodies of other fish press more and more tightly. The net is being lifted, water slithers past its scales, it chokes on air, is blinded by light, deafened by the terrible shrieking of winches.

  Lav sits up. Her hand is pressed against a raw spot where the knapsack buckle has cut into her cheek. Outside, lights flash. Something roars past, making the tent's sides billow out in a wash of air. The noise is deafening. Something large: motorcycles, jeeps, dune buggies, are racing round and around the tent.

  Heart pounding, Lav crawls to the open flap and looks out. At that instant a motorcycle wheel, spitting sand, passes within a foot of her face. She heaves herself backwards, pulls the heavy jacket over her head, covers her ears and crouches at the back of the tiny tent.

  The noise is frightful but worse than the noise is a a great empty sense of loss that fills the tent, fills the dark space under the jacket, fills her head. Someone, some child, is sobbing. The sobbing goes on and on. She is drowning in tears, in sweat, she is choking. She untangles herself, lies gasping, eventually the sobbing sound stops but the terrible shriek and grinding continues.

  “I am dreaming,” Lav tells herself, “just dreaming.” She searches in her dream for the salmon, but the fish is gone.

  There is only the memory, memory and sound, sound and light circling around and around. And it is real and loud and bright, changing the inside of the tent from fluorescent red to quivering white. Stunning her with light, then plunging her into pitch blackness, over and over as the machines spin around the little tent.

  Her instinct is to huddle down again, to hide, to cover her head and hope they will go away. But that will not save her. Now she must block out the memory, block out the noise, must pull on her sweater, her sneakers, haul the knapsack over her head.

  And she does. Concentrating on each action, she manages to do each of these things, then to crawl out, to stand upright in front of the tent. The lights blind her, the roar is deafening. She can see nothing but helmeted heads atop a blur of black, red and chrome. Salty sand stings her face as they swerve past.

  They are just people, just people riding all-terrain vehicles. Lav tells herself this, makes herself call out, wave her arms. Having had their fun, they will stop, take off their helmets. They will do this, she assures herself, any minute now they will stop, change from giant insects into teenagers looking for a place to build a fire, to drink beer, sing, make love. Any minute they will pull off these plastic bubbles and she will see hair, eyes, human faces. And so she waits, standing in front of the tent, willing herself to be calm.

  But they do not stop or even slow down. In fact they whirl faster and faster, blurring like dervishes into a ribbon of light and colour. Something is being shouted at her from the plastic faces. She can understand none of words but the intent is clear. It is the sound of unreasoned hate, uncontrolled savagery, it is the sound prehistoric men, running toward each other with rocks, may have made.

  Lav's facade of calm drops. Panic takes over. Where is safety? What can be trusted? Not memory, not dreams, not the evidence of her own eyes. What has happened? What is happening, is going to happen? She stands like an animal caught in headlights, trapped by machines that resemble gods—gods risen from the earth's centre to mete out punishment.

  Then one of the machines hits a tent peg—sparks fly, it veers off. There is a break in the circle of light and she races forward toward the sea. She can hear the rasp and cough as the machines are put into reverse, as they turn, gouging new paths into the sand.

  Their lights find her again. They circle in loops, playing with her as she races down the beach. She falls against Lavinia's rock, turns and runs madly towards the sand banks—towards the deep shadows where bushes overhang the beach. For a minute they lose her. She stumbles against the high bank and crouches down, shivering, praying they will leave.

  She is sobbing now, pressing back against the crumbling hill, holding her hand against her mouth to keep the sounds back. Her trousers are torn. One knee, where she banged into the rock, is bleeding, but the knapsack is still around her shoulder.

  They seem to have retreated, returned to race around the tent, whooping and shouting as their machines skid against the rocks she piled around the pegs. Then the formation changes, the lights fan out, they are racing down the beach towards her. In a moment they will see her huddling beneath the overhang. Lav turns and on hands and knees begins to climb. She loses a shoe. The sand slides away from under her so that she must scramble sideways. At the top she inches along, feeling the underside of the overhang until she comes to a spot
where the bank has collapsed. Very carefully, she eases herself up, grabbing at weeds, roots, at the thorn-covered branches of rose bushes, expecting every moment that the ground will give way and send her rolling back—down to the beach, down to her tormentors. At last she hoists herself over the top and, just as the lights find her, rolls over the edge into a clump of low bushes.

  The motorized beasts converge directly below and begin assaulting the incline. They back off, make a great, roaring dash up the perpendicular hill, roll backwards and start again. Each time they come a little closer. Terrified, she jumps up and heedless of the lights at her back begins to run through the bushes. Slipping on sand, stumbling between patches of grass and overgrown rocks, she runs towards the safe darkness. She is sobbing out loud now, each breath is painful. She runs and falls, runs and falls, until at last she is pitched head-first into blackness. Momentarily stunned she lies there, face pressed into the sand, head throbbing as waves of panic wash over her—as fear fights with anger.

  “Goddamned bloody savages! What's the use of a world that can be ruined by barbarians on wheels? I'd like to kill them—could kill them—would kill them if I could! Gladly!”

  See her now, Lavinia Andrews, modern woman, art lover, peace-marcher, spa user, scientist, hiding from machines, hiding from monsters, hiding from memory. Here she lies, clothed in linen slacks, silk shirt, sweater, hand-knit—not by her hands but by the hands of some Peruvian peasant—Lavinia Andrews, B.Sc.(Hons.), M.Sc, Ph.D., dazed, bleeding, and eventually sleeping, in the hollow where an Indian once died—murdered by one of her not-too-distant relatives.

  Sixteen

  At dawn Alf Andrews comes walking slowly down the beach carrying a yellow plastic bag. He pauses for a moment beside the flattened tent before climbing the bank and striding noisily through the bushes. Lav is already on her feet, waiting with a large rock ready to throw, when he appears on the rim of the depression.

  He jumps down into the hollow, landing neatly at her feet where he squats staring up into her scratched face, studying her shredded sweater, stained slacks, her bare, bleeding foot. “Had a hard night of it, did ya?”

  Lav drops the rock, sits down suddenly and with her head on her knees begins to cry.

  Alf ignores her. He searches around, collecting sticks and bits of driftwood which he piles inside the circle of blackened stones at the center of the hollow. He takes everything out of the plastic bag, lines up each item in the sand: a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, a brown paper bag, a box of matches, two mugs, a knife, a flat bottomed kettle.

  By then Lav has stopped crying. She blows her nose in the sleeve of her sweater and tells him about the night before. As she talks she watches his hands, which are narrow and dark. He lights the fire carefully using twigs and the brown paper bag—its contents, dried caplin, he has already spread on flat rocks around the fire.

  “Only our own crowd,” he says when she finishes. He pours part of the bottled water into the kettle which he holds on a stick over the flames.

  Lav is indignant, “What do you mean—'our own crowd?'”

  “Our own crowd—youngsters out for a bit of fun,” Alf does not take his eyes from the kettle.

  “Fun! You call it fun to terrorize a person? To destroy property? To act like a bunch of vandals?”

  “Look, lady! You chose to come out here—this is their place. They were only playin', havin' a little party before bein' shipped off to Ontario where they'll be locked up in factories for the summer. They're the country's great reserve labour pool—Canada's Okies. Why, if wasn't for them we couldn't have free trade, couldn't compete with the third world for cheap labour! So don't begrudge the poor little buggers their last fling!” He pulls her shoe from his jacket pocket and passes it to her, “Here—go get dressed.”

  She climbs out of the hollow, walks through the cool morning mist down to the sea, pulls off her slacks, wades in a few inches and squats to urinate—a strange sensation. She washes her feet, hands and face, the cuts and bruises stinging with salt and icy cold water. When she returns to the pit Alf is carefully measuring tea into the kettle. They sit in silence, waiting for it to steep.

  Lav feels safe and comfortable. She cannot see the ocean but can hear it roaring below the rim of the hill. The fire warms her, the black tea slips down her throat like some wronderful new liquid she has never tasted. She eats quickly, taking huge bites of the crisp caplin—heads, spines, tails, guts and all—rolled in slabs of crusty bread.

  “Me and my brothers used to find bits of flint and arrowheads all around this fire—used to build bough houses and play at being cowboys and Indians. We thought it was our very own place, a secret no one else in the world knew about,” Alf nods towards the circle of blackened rocks, the bones of burnt trees. “Maybe we were right. It was a long time ago—before ATVs.”

  They sit talking in the warm hollow for an hour or more. Lav asks about the geography of the offshore. She knows, but does not say she knows, that the Cape is situated on a huge underwater plateau.

  “The sea 'round here is no more than fifty fathom deep—used to swarm with fish—caplin, herring, cod, lobster, anything you'd ever want,” Alt tells her.

  “In Grandmother's day every bit of ocean was divided up between families who lived along this coast—mostly on the offshore islands. Lots of men went to the Labrador of course—but around home they fished the same grounds year after year. By the time Father was old enough to fish people had motor-boats and were going farther out, to the Funks or up along what they used to call the French Shore. By then the salt fish trade was already in decline. Once refrigeration came, people didn't need salt cod—all had to be fresh or fresh frozen.”

  “We brought the world's biggest reserve of protein into Confederation and now look at us!” Alf continues, relentlessly pursuing the only subject he displays any emotion about. “Europeans do a great job of protecting their own fishing grounds but no one protects ours. Fact is, Canada signed an agreement in '84 that prevents us from even putting observers on French fishing ships—though we all knew they were taking up to four times their quota. There's fourteen factory freezers out there right now—just out of sight of land. Of course we're doin' the same ourselves—you heard that talk yesterday—nowadays a fish haven't got a chance. It's a wonder any survive—not many do!”

  He sounds just like Mark Rodway, Lav thinks. Having no desire to discuss fish she changes the subject, asks how many brothers and sister he has.

  “Just Ned and Vicki—she married a U.C. minister, they live in Ontario.”

  “But you said you and your brothers used to play in this pit.”

  “I had a twin brother—he died young.”

  Knowing from his voice that she has trespassed into forbidden territory, Lav quickly asks about Rachel. What kind of woman had she been when she was young?

  Amazingly, Alf knows little more about his grandmother than she does. Rachel had left the Cape before he was born and had somehow become a nurse, “Worked for some doctor who had sons. I know that because she used to send us boys their outgrown clothes—in packages from New York, velvet jodhpurs and striped shirts. We hated 'em, made us the laughingstock of the place, Grandmother did.”

  She asks if Rachel Jane will get Rachel's brooch.

  “I dare say,” Alf is curt again—not rude, as he had been the day before but clearly setting limits on what questions he will tolerate.

  Tired of trying to decipher the protocol of conversation, Lav lapses into silence. She thinks about last night, wonders how long she had slept. How would it have been ii Alf Andrews had not come looking for her? What would she have done if she'd waken alone? The memory or dream—whatever it was that had flashed accross her mind during those last moments in the tent—that scene from her childhood, of Audrey, of a motorcycle, hangs on a thread at the back of Lav's mind. Will she have to take it out, examine it, or can she ant the thread, drop the memory back into that unexamined corner it has occupied for thirty years?

&nbs
p; “You were right, I shouldn't have come out here by myself,” she says.

  “Wasn't those young Turks I was thinking about—I was expectin' the great white bear to come out among the graves, or for Mary Bundle to make away with you…” Alf says and when she smiles—though not as confidently as she would have the day before—he does not smile back.

  As the sun rises the mist burns off. They walk along the beach gathering up pieces of the ruined tent, the thermos and Lav's parka.

  Alf fills his yellow bag with broken glass and plastic containers: “We're the biggest slobs on earth—still dumping anywhere—especially in the sea—we think the sea will take anything. Once or twice a week this time of year I lug home a bag of garbage,” he says.

  Like the owner of a cherished garden, he leads Lav from place to place pointing out hills and hollows, sheltered places where small purple flowers grow out of sand, the round underwater shadows of flatfish, tiny birds that dart about on thread-like legs, tidal pools shimmering with multi-coloured rocks, breakers cresting over offshore shoals.

  They spend the morning making a slow loop of the Cape. But according to Alf it is not the Cape of Thomas and Lavinia, not even the Cape of his childhood—or of yesterday.

  “It's never the same twice,” Alf says. “Come out here ten days in a row and the shoreline is different each day.”

  The idea of a place that is forever reshaping itself, or being reshaped by ice and sea, horrifies and delights Lav. She wonders if the Cape will vanish completely some day, but Alf says no, it is the changing that saves it, “One bit of beach crumbles away and another bit appears.”

  Yet some things remain. He finds vegetable cellars, now caved in and overgrown, shows her the great pointed rock which, he says, is called God's Finger, locates Aunt Jennie's garden, footings of the Union Store, the trenched marshland that had once produced barnfuls of grass, barrels of vegetables. They stand on the granite rock upon which the Vincents' house had been built and look out over the pond that has long ago turned salty.