Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  They visit the graveyards. First the one on the point where many graves have slipped into the sea but where some remain—a few inches of white marble, stone fingers, carved crowns and crosses, the heads of small stone lambs rising from sand drifts. Lav kneels at one of these and with her hands scoops sand away from the white slab.

  Feeling the letters with her fingers she reads:

  In loving memory of Ned Andrews

  Born Weymouth, England 1799—Died Cape Random 1838

  Born into the world above,

  They, our happy brother greet,

  Take him to the throne of love,

  Place him at the Saviour's feet.

  Other words had been cut below, “Erected by his loving wife Mary,” perhaps? But no, Mary would never have chosen such a verse! Maybe Ben and Meg erected the stone, or Lavinia. Lav will never know, sand pressing into the letters has obliterated the lower lines.

  Near what Alf calls the new graveyard they stop beside a few feet of crumbling stonework—all that is left of the Cape Random church. Lav asks how such a building could have vanished in just fifty years.

  “Years after everyone left the church was pulled down and carted away,” he tells her. “Some federal program to keep people from starvin' one winter there wasn't enough stamps to go 'round.”

  He nods towards the rows of headstones, “Kept them people poor buildin' it, only fair the livin' should make a few dollars tearin' it down. Besides, it was a nuisance. Youngsters used to climb over the rafters and bazz rocks through the windows.”

  “In civilized countries old churches are protected,” Lav says and quotes:

  …for how can man die better

  Than facing fearful odds

  For the ashes of his fathers,

  And the temples of his gods?

  “I can think of a dozen better ways!” Alf snaps. He turns his back on her and walks into the neatly fenced graveyard.

  It will be a long time before she learns of Alf's twin brother who hung himself inside the rotting walls of the demolished church. Tossed a rope over a hand-carved cross that had hung above the congregation for fifty years, and jumped. The boy's name was Mark—he had been seventeen.

  He and Alf were to have returned to St. John's the next day for their second year of university. He should not have died—by rights would not have died, “I'd stake my life on it—all Mark intended to do was scare Mother—sprain his ankle maybe, so's she'd let him stay home and fish—he had no interest in education,” Alf will tell Lav years later.

  But the cross had not broken. Boys jigging connors off the Cape found Mark on their way home. He was still hanging from the crossbar that had not, after all, been made of wood but of a long iron rod rusted to the same colour as the wooden beam.

  Although Lav knows nothing of this, she knows she has deeply offended Alf. Going to stand beside him at a low stone wall surrounding four identical headstones she apologizes: “When I was a child I use to prove how smart I was by quoting poetry—I still can't resist it,” she says. “Besides, I'm still angry about last night.”

  He will not let her off so easily. “Speaking of the ashes of fathers—why didn't you ever come to see him when he was alive?” he asks, his voice as cold and combative as it had been the day before.

  Lav stares, not understanding, “My father died long ago.”

  He points to one of the marble headstones, reads the words out loud:

  In memory of David Albert Andrews

  Born Cape Random 1924—died 1975,

  For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

  A cloud seems to have passed across the sun, she shivers, “It can't be the David who was my father—he died before that—before I was born!”

  “It's your father, alright—he died less than fourteen years ago. There's his people—Aunt Cass and Uncle Ki beside him—and that's his brother Cle's marker right there.”

  Lav sits down on the stone wall, “My mother said he was killed in the war. At sea—before I was born.”

  “He was in the war alright—they both were—but Cle was the one killed,” he produces a flask, offers it to Lav but she shakes her head.

  Alf takes a long drink, “You mean to tell me, all these years you never knew your father was alive?”

  She cannot bottler to answer. She is trying to remember everything she knows about her father—very little, only what she was told that night in her mother's apartment. Had Charlotte not known? Had she forgotten? Yesterday Lav would not have entertained such a possibility. Today she knows better.

  “Maybe he was reported dead,” she says.

  “He was reported missing in action. But he turned up in a hospital somewhere in England.” Alf speaks in a dull, even tone, “Your father was back in St. John's within six months of the day his ship went down—but by then you and your mother were gone.” He turns to look at Lav, “I remember your mother.”

  “She's still alive—well, why wouldn't she be she's only…” Lav glances at the birth date on the headstone, realizes it does not line up with the age her father was supposed to have been, realizes she probably does not know her mother's real age.

  “She's only in her sixties,” she ends weakly, adds, “She's recently remarried—living in California.” Even as she tells him this Lav wonders if it is true—perhaps everything she knows, or thinks she knows about Charlotte is a lie.

  “She would.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “She was that sort of woman—even then—like a cat. The kind to do whatever made her most comfortable. That kind always ends up somewhere like California.”

  Lav guesses this bitterness has more to do with some other woman—his missing wife perhaps—than with her mother. “What kind of life did he have—my father?” she asks tentatively.

  “Not too good, I'd say,” Alf pauses, considers, “But then, who knows? Maybe he was happier than any of us. Come on, let's pick up our stuff and get back to the cars before dark.”

  As they walk towards the hollow he seems to relent, begins to talk about her father, “We all knew he was missing, of course. There'd be a special church service and prayers whenever that happened—by then there was a good few along this coast missing—defending the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods over in England,” he gives her a sharp sideways glance.

  “Then we heard he was in a hospital in St. John's. He was there for months. Aunt Cass put it around he was in the San—something wrong with his lungs, she said. But wasn't the San.”

  Alf unscrews his flask, takes another drink before telling the rest of the story. “Late that fall Uncle Ki and Aunt Cass went in to St. John's and got him. I was no more than five or six but I was in school. The teacher marched us all down to meet the boat. All of us—a dozen or so youngster holdin' little Union Jacks lined up on the wharf. We started to sing some song—'There'll Always Be An England'—or some such stunned thing. Then we saw what he was like.”

  Standing at the top of the gangplank David Andrews had looked the same—a tall red-headed sailor in the tight Navy jacket and flared trousers. But then he started down, falling over himself, shaking with fear, being held up. It had taken forever. When he got ashore everyone could see the simple-mindedness in his face. Flags and song forgotten, the children stood in a silent line watching the young man being led away from the wharf, a parent holding onto each hand.

  “Aunt Cass's face was like the rock but Uncle Ki had tears rollin' down his cheeks—the one time I ever saw a grown man cry. It was like the end of the world for them—only had the two sons and by then they knew Cle was gone.”

  Back in the hollow, Alf says they have plenty of time. He lights the fire and boils the kettle again. They sip whiskey-laced tea and he tells Lav about her father's life.

  “Took care of him all their lives, Aunt Cass and Uncle Ki did. When they died he went to live with Maud Stokes and them up in Wesleyville—Maud was a Vincent, Aunt Cass's sister. He got along with youngsters—I can remember skim
min' rocks with him down on the landwash. He would never get into a boat, though—went right crazy it you tried to get him on the water. Still, he was good as the next man in the woods, kept half the place in firewood—used to make wonderful thole pins.”

  Alf searches for something more to tell her about David Andrews. After some thought he says, “Your father was a good man, never harmed a living soul—and not many can say that.”

  They walk back down the beach and through the grassy dunes without a word.

  “Some of us cut the bridge apart last fall—didn't want the ATV's out here tearin' everything up—but the young crowd got it clobbered back together again,” he remarked as they crossed over the little bridge linking Cape Random to the mainland.

  Lav does not respond. She is thinking about her father. About David Andrews living here all these years—living like a child—simple-minded, Alf had said. What do those words imply? Had he remembered anything? England? The war? A wife? Could he read? Write? Did he remember having written that letter?

  She thinks how strange it is that Charlotte and David—yes and her too—all three should have treacherous memories, memories that deceive, that obliterate, that lie.

  They are back in the rubbish-strewn parking space, packing things into the trunk of her car before Alf breaks the prolonged silence.

  “Maybe he had as good a life as any. Most of the men who came back from overseas left again—ended up workin' out in Vancouver or up in Toronto diggin' ditches, buildin' ships or houses—or in St. John's sellin' cars or neckties. They'd come back summertimes—you still see some of 'em—yarnin' and drinkin', wonderin' why they ever left the place.”

  Lav is not ready to accept such a complacent view. “But they had lives—real lives—didn't they!” she climbs into her car and slams the door. Then, “I'm sorry,” she says, relenting, for he has been kind, kinder that she would have ever imagined.

  “None of the women mentioned anything about that yesterday—about my father being—being,” she finds it hard to say the word Alf had used. Her voice drops, “simple-minded.”

  “No, I s'pose not. I daresay they were trying to remember him for you the way he was before he joined up—the way they think of him now.” Alf Andrews leans against his truck and stares back towards the Cape. She has the feeling he is about to tell her something, hopes he will not. But all he says is, “Why don't you come back to the house for supper?”

  She tells him no. She does not want to talk to anyone, does not want to ask any more questions, does not want to be told any more secrets. For the first, and perhaps the last time in her life, Lavinia Andrews knows enough—more than enough.

  seventeen

  Lav will return to the Cape of course, will return and leave, return and leave—plagued by indecision that will become more acute in December when her son is born.

  During the first years of the child's life, Lav is still occasionally distressed by her, and now his, lack of history, sometimes tormented by dreams of brooding fish, still sporadically engaged in a battle against sagging breasts, greying hair, against inclinations towards sloth.

  Such preoccupations are, however, incidental—mere background to the business of earning a living, of building a life for herself and the boy who, after long deliberation, she has named David Saul. She carefully explains that the boy must be called by both names.

  After the day of her outburst at the press conference, Lav never again sees Wayne Drover. Lav's firing, tactfully expedited one bright morning in an expensive Ottawa restaurant, ends all contact with her former colleagues. No one calls except Ian Farman, whose guilt about the Newfoundland fiasco results in a number of good contract jobs coming her way.

  During one of her sojourns in Davisporte, Ian even manages to put her in touch with a job funded by the federal government. A bizarre project involving the breeding of certain species of flounder and flatfish to produce a protein similar to antifreeze—one that might preserve body organs longer than anything now available. Ian had phoned to tell her that the hatchery in Valleyfield needed someone to monitor the project. She, being over-qualified, got the job and returned happily to Davisporte.

  Lav had enjoyed the winter she spent living with Selina and Rachel Jane. The job was interesting and Selina was glad to take care of the baby. Lav learned how to make bread, ride a snowmobile and play a card game called forty-fives.

  Although Alf had a bedroom in his mother's house, a dark gloomy room built below the long veranda, the women hardly saw him. On the day Lav returned with the baby he had nodded, barely acknowledging her, as if they were strangers—as if the day on the Cape had never happened. That winter he seemed to spend most of his time at the Cat, returning late at night and leaving before the women were up. When Lav asked Rachel Jane what Alf did all day, the girl said, “Drink and lecture!”

  Rachel Jane had recently bought a second-hand car and said she was sick of working at the motel, wanted to get away. “If Fadder don't stop jawin' people about the fishery we're not goin' to have any customers left, anyway,” she told Lav and Selina.

  Rachel Jane was forever after Alf to get live music and put a decent dance floor in at the Cat: “That way you won't do so much talkin'. We'd get the young crowd and the place'd be a bit lively. There's lots of groups around—that guy Hounsell I graduated with is a drummer now in Gander—got his own band called 'The Spiked Pig,'” Lav heard the girl tell her father one day.

  Alf, leaning against the kitchen window drinking coffee—he never sits at the table—had looked past Rachel Jane and caught Lav's eye.

  “Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go,

  Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!” he said, and actually smiled.

  After that acknowledgement that he remembered their day on the Cape, he and Lav often quoted poetry at each other, competing to see who could recall the most lines.

  Unfortunately, three months after it opened, the hatchery closed down. A drug company in Massachusetts had challenged the right of the Canadian government to subsidize research on a product that would compete with theirs. The job ended, and in April Lav and David Saul went back to Ottawa.

  In Ottawa Lav can always find work. Shamelessly calling in old favours she finds a half-day job at the art gallery where she once volunteered, and contract work in university labs. Sometimes living in the house she and Philip still jointly own, sometimes renting it, she receives financial advice from Philip's lawyer, gratefully accepts the many baby gifts her mother sends and establishes a friendship with Philip's estranged wife Zinnie, who has abandoned the environmental movement for a staid government job.

  Her own children having caused her endless anxiety, Zinnie considers Lav mad, but very brave, to bring a child into the world.

  “You'd do better with a cat,” she had told Lav the night David Saul was born.

  According to Zinnie the human race has done itself in. “It's not the world that's in danger—just people. The world will get along just fine without us,” she says when Lav tells her the story of what had happened to the Oceans 2000 research.

  Despite her grim philosophy Zinnie has a cheerful disposition. She has no patience with Lav's brooding. Introspection, according to Zinnie, is both boring and rude. The two women begin hiking in the Gatineau Hills on Sunday afternoons, taking turns carrying David Saul in a back pack. After a day in the hills they return to talk and eat makeshift meals in Zinnie's decaying house where one or other of her children is constantly in residence, recovering from some financial or emotional crisis. Lav likes Zinnie's children.

  “Because you don't have to live with them,” Zinnie says, but she is delighted to act as David Saul's honorary aunt—on condition she can disown him when he becomes a teenager.

  Lav finds Ottawa noisier, faster, sharper than she remembers. Ottawa air smells of chemicals, its water tastes of detergent. Things are depressingly well-finished—too shiny.

  Only Zinnie and the house make the place bearable—but early in 1992 Zinnie leaves Ott
awa, moves to Northern Ontario to teach in a small community college, and Lav finds herself thinking more and more of the Cape.

  Always on the look-out for mention of Newfoundland in Ontario papers, Lav is aware that cod, or the absence of cod, has become headline news. In one three week period, she sees DFO's estimates of the spawning biomass of northern cod suddenly dropped from well over 100,000 tonnes to zero. Damage control, Lav supposes, someone in the Department trying to cover their ass. Experts will be flown in.

  She considers calling Ian Farman, asking about the possibility of a contract job in Newfoundland. Instead, she calls Selina Andrews, who has watched Lav's shuttling back and forth between Ontario and Newfoundland with a jaundiced eye.

  “You might just as well come home and 'bride,” Selina advises. “There's some, like my Vicki, can walk away from the place and never give it another thought—got no feelings about it. Then there's the other kind—the ones like you and Rachel Jane—never content anywhere else.”

  For a week Lav agonizes. Ottawa, she thinks, is like a room without a window—safe and secure as a vault. She cannot imagine a future there. But there is a tide in the affairs of men—and of women—and surely moving to Newfoundland now would be going against the tide, going the wrong way. And how will she live in a place so remote as Davisporte? What will she do with her time? How will she make a life for herself and her son in such a place?

  In the end she tells Nat Hornsby to sell the Ottawa house. She buys a station wagon into which she packs her four year old son, their cat—a parting gift from Zinnie—and their belongings. Then she drives to Newfoundland.

  Lav and David Saul arrive in Davisporte the day before Timothy Drew is slated to make another great announcement. It is almost the first thing Selina speaks of: “Here it is July, and Ned still don't know how much cod him and the boys can take—we're livin' in dread of what that man is goin' to say,” she tells Lav.