Brushing aside jealousy then, he bent himself to his loving her. Nothing mattered then, not a hundred curtained corners if she so desired them.
Her comfort was all he wanted, and she seemed comfortable. Even when their first winter together came, and ice entombed most of the falls and the brook, and snow buried the meadow, she appeared as contented as he, listening to the wind yodelling outside, the stove crackling cheerily, and nothing but a handful of dishes waiting to be done. Truly, his heart nearly burst one evening when she looked up from her supper of corned beef hash, a startled look widening her clear blue eyes, and told him he had become her first best friend. Later that morning, as she sat beside the southern window, laying back her head and closing her eyes to the white of the hills against a full blue sky, he crept toward her, knowing how she disliked such foolish things, and leaned his cheek so close to hers he felt the heat of it without touching it, then allowed the softest flutter of his lashes against hers, like filaments of velvet brushing her lid.
“A butterfly kiss,” he whispered as her eyes sprang awake.
“My Lord, how do you think of such things?” she exclaimed, and tutted as he strolled back across their tiny kitchen, his chest taking on that fullness it always took whenever she attributed to him some simple little thing, as though he were its creator—which is what he felt like sometimes watching her putter around the kitchen, polishing the kettle, the doorknobs, the leaves of her wandering Jews, her windows—her creator, taking her away from mind-numbing wretchedness and building her a house that pulsated with a life of his making.
’Course, creators need souls to realize their works. And thus far Adelaide had complemented him wonderfully. And were things to have remained stationary, great harmony might’ve persisted in that tiny household. But as Sylvanus might well have known from his days fishing on the water, nothing is stationary, but always in a state of change, either for the better or the worse. And undoubtedly, given the omen preceding the news of Adelaide’s first pregnancy, he prepared himself for the worst.
CHAPTER TEN
STATE OF CHANGE
SPRING CAME EARLY THAT YEAR, breaking up the frozen water of the arm and sending it drifting through the neck and dispersing around the head. Soon as the arm was cleared, Sylvanus launched his boat, some dinner stogged in his cuddy, and his rifle and a shotgun resting alongside. The sky was creamy white, making for pearly-grey waters in the windless morning. A perfect day for spotting the rippling black V of a young seal’s nose cutting through the water as it swam on its back. Outside the neck, Sylvanus opened his throttle, heading out of the bay.
Several times he spotted the slick black coat of an old harp sharply outlined upon a pan of white ice. But, nay, he wasn’t wanting to cut speed just yet; not this, his first day on the water since October past, and the wind softened by a touch of warmth. He loved it, he did, the openness and the sense of freedom he gained from motoring on those soft, calm days with a warm southerly.
A good twenty miles out, the headland rounding into Cape Ray neared to his right. Several motorboats dotted the water, all a fair distance from one another, motoring easily in various directions. Sealing, they were, and as he watched one boat of hunters cut their motor and drift silently into the pathway of a black snout rippling toward them, he thought to cut his motor and join in the hunt. But something else caught his attention, something white and big appearing above the ridge of Cape Ray like a huge iceberg. Which is what he thought it was at first, but as it moved steadily forward from behind the cape toward the open waters, he felt his mouth drop. It was a ship—unlike nothing he’d ever seen, or could’ve imagined—thrice and thrice more the size of trawlers and ocean-going freighters, its smokestack bigger than the boat Sylvanus was sitting in.
He gave a low whistle. Must’ve got caught in pack ice, he thought, and took refuge behind the cape. The massive ship rounded the headland and would’ve swamped a dozen trawlers had they been in her path. About three hundred feet long she was, and a thousand tons for sure, he was to tell his brothers later, and flying high above her smokestack was the British flag, and scrolled along her hull in huge white lettering was The Fairtry. But it was the net rigging on her stern that was most astounding. A fishing boat?
Nay. Not possible. Not possible that this leviathan of the seas could believe itself a fishing boat. He shook his head in wonder as it cleared the headland, heading out to the open waters, black smoke belching out of its stack and the deep braying of a horn warning of its arrival. In minutes it was vanishing, the white of its deck houses pluming white against the spring sky, its stern gliding effortlessly through the water.
“Jeezes, where you been at, brother, you never heard tell of she?” said Jake, after Sylanvus had motored home and ducked into his brother’s stage, telling of what he had seen. He listened with both awe and foreboding as his brothers, busy with mending nets and gear in preparation for the summer’s fishing, told how the British ship—just this year put to sea—was a plant and freezer all in one, filleting and freezing thirty tons of fish a day, and how it could stay on the water for eighty days without putting ashore.
Thirty tons of fish a day for eighty days. Sylvanus tried, but couldn’t figure such a thing. He thought of the trawlers, five hundred sitting on the sea a number of years ago, and their colossal thousand-foot nets catching upwards of fifty thousand pounds of fish or more from just one hour’s dragging, and did so about six, seven times a day, storing the tonnage in her hold before heading back to her homeland. And he thought of Ambrose—and others, since—telling him of the waste: the split nets, the dumping of unwanted catches. Christ, and his breathing tightened, how heavily carpeted would be the waters with this leviathan beast fouling her nets and losing or dumping her load? And more—much more than fouled nets and dumping—how heavy a price would those mammoth nets extract from the spawning grounds? And that was what sickened Sylvanus Now—that something too big for a mind to figure was out there fishing the spawning grounds.
There’s talk, too, his brothers were saying, about the Russians having hoodwinked the British out of the blueprints for the factory ship. But the Russians had no fishing fleet yet—small worries there. It was the ones already out there, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Americans. Jeezes, there were more colours out on the fishing grounds these days than on an old woman’s quilt, the brothers agreed.
“Yes, sir, buddy, the foreigners caught more fish out of the sea this past year than we did,” said Manny. “First time that’s ever happened, sir—the foreigners catching more fish than all of Canada.”
“They did?” asked Sylvanus with surprise.
Jake, hunched over his skinning table chiselling out a thole-pin, threw him a look of disgust. “Jeezes, douse some water in his face, wake him up,” he said to Manny, “else the trawlers will be tying up to his stage, carting off his fish.”
“Aah, marital bliss,” said Manny. “That’ll end soon enough. Better get yourself home, my son, there’s something waiting for you.”
Sylvanus was unhearing. All his life he’d been listening to the old fishermen talking of their fathers and their fathers before them, pleading and begging and petitioning governments to scourge the ocean of the trawlers that pillaged and pillaged again the belly of the sea, leaving destruction and waste in their wake, and that threatened the extinction of a way of life—his way of life. And he heard again and again the placating response of those governing fathers since time beyond: “Sit back, my boys, for as vast as the sky is the ocean, and more plentiful than the stars are her fish. So worry ye not about a few trawlers when the fish is so thick ye can walk on water, and worry ye not about the ocean’s floor when a good trawling is necessary for thinning her beds and thickening her growth.”
“Look, Syllie,” said Manny, pausing before him with an armload of netting, “there’s always going to be bigger and better ways of doing something, my son. You just got to jump on board, buddy, and ride it to the end.”
“And we all knows
what end that’s going to be,” said Jake. “Fished out, that’s what. They seen it in Father’s day after the First War, and we’re seeing it now after the Second—the same goddamn thing. Another war is what we needs, blow the bastards off our waters—”
“Yes, my son, yes—another war,” cut in Manny, heading out of the stage with his load of netting, grimacing over his shoulder as Jake blustered into his well-worn tirade about the buildup of trawlers on the banks before the First World War, and how the catches went down, but grew again during the war with the submarines and mines keeping the waters free of fishing vessels, “and we seen the same bloody thing with the Second War,” he argued, following Sylvanus who was following Manny outside. “Dozens of trawlers out there fishing, catches go down, and along comes the submarines blasting everything off the water, and what do you know—the catches start rising agin, fish coming ashore in droves. So don’t bloody tell me you can’t overfish. All the proof they needs right there. We can be overfished, plain as day, plain as the jeezes day.”
“Yes, b’ye, plain as day,” said Sylvanus.
“And now they got a boat bigger than a plant sitting on the spawning grounds. You watch and see, buddy, if the fishing’s not going to go agin, you damn well watch and see. Another war is what we needs, and by jeezes, if they tears up another one of my nets, that’s what they’re going to get, and it won’t be no jeezling cannon shot from shore, either. You can snicker, buddy,” he threw at Manny, who was shaking his head and grinning as he spread his netting over the beach, “but I ain’t laughing, I guarantee you. I won’t mind picking off a few of them foreign bastards—and our own government along with them—they keeps tearing up my nets.”
“Yes, b’ye, go blow them up,” said Manny. “Syllie, get your arse home. Didn’t I tell you there’s was something waiting for you? Never mind what, just get the hell home,” he hollered.
Sylvanus grinned. Hard to feel glum around Manny. He dodged toward home, sidestepping a swarm of screaming youngsters racing thither, shaking his head at wisps of his brothers’ arguing brought to him by the wind.
The instant he set foot on his stoop and his mother swung open the door, he sobered.
“Addie’s pregnant,” said Eva. “Quick, get in and close the door, she’s sick. Here, take this to her. Well, take it,” she said, shoving the towel into his hands as he stood there, gaping stupidly.
He moved woodenly toward his bedroom. Adelaide was leaning over their bed, retching into her chamber pot.
“I don’t remember Mother being sick,” she gasped as he entered. “I-I just don’t remember her ever being sick.”
“Seven youngsters, she never had time,” said Eva, bustling past him with a cup of what looked to be brandy whipped with egg. She paused, turning back to Sylvanus. “Here. Help her drink this,” she said, shoving the cup into his hands. Snatching back the towel he was holding, she passed it to Adelaide. “Syllie, are you listening?” she demanded as he simply stood there, watching his Addie pulling her hair back from her face as she continued retching.
He nodded and sat on a chair, his eyes fraught with concern as Adelaide weakly sat up and took a sip of the brandy he held awkwardly to her mouth.
“Not as though we didn’t know about babies, is it?” she said, her voice all a-tremble, yet her eyes grappling onto his as she lay back on her pillow. “So stop your worrying right now—unless you thinks I’m the princess finding her first pea. Is that what you thinks,” she asked as he stared at the paleness of her skin, the half-filled chamber pot, “that I’m going to start screeching and bawling like a youngster myself? That I’m without reason?”
“No, no,” he mumbled, clinging to the sparkling blue of her eyes, trying to shut out the damp, limp hair, her tiny shoulders. Lord, she was scarcely a wrinkle beneath the mound of blankets, and when, as if struck with a sudden rash of heat, she pulled the blankets aside, he stared at the narrowness of her shoulders, her tiny waist, her hips no more than two hand spans apart—
“Stop that!” she cried, struggling to sit up. “I’m well fitted for a dozen babies. Mother’s proof of that.”
“I promised you’d never have to.”
“Promises!” she scoffed. “Only fools make promises. You listen to me, Sylvanus Now, I already told you I’d be fine once this day come, and now it’s come. Ooh, Lord, and I would be fine, too, if my stomach ever stops heaving. Figures Mother never once puked.” She put her hand to her mouth and appeared she might throw up again; but as if by sheer will, she slid off the bed, holding her stomach as well as her mouth, calling out, “Eva! Eva, it’s bread I needs.”
He trailed behind, holding back from laying a steadying arm around her shoulders as she shuffled into the kitchen, her naked toes flitting amongst the folds of her cotton nightdress. Plenty of times during the weeks that followed he strived to hold himself back as her morning sickness persisted each and every day, sometimes well into the evenings, and she fought to stay upright, cooking a few meals and polishing her kitchen.
“Oh, bugger it, Sylvanus, I won’t be caught doing nothing. They already thinks I’m a cripple,” she argued of her in-laws and those other outport women coming to visit, as he tried to coax her back to bed.
“Oh, now, Addie, you’re not still thinking about Jake’s foolishness.”
“Jake or no, that’s how I feels with all them sitting around and me in bed—like a cripple. I told you all that before, how they makes me feel grubby, even when I got the place all cleaned up. Take a nap themselves if that’s all they got to do, flick around other people’s houses.”
“Cripes, Addie, you can’t look down on people who’re only wanting to help.”
“Help?! Help me do what—throw up? And that’s just what they does with their sitting around, chatting, looking for dirt—makes me throw up. Ooh, don’t argue with me, Sylvanus, I knows I’m not fit to listen to, it’s mostly that I’m sick, is all, and everything’s getting on my nerves, especially when there’s a bunch of women flocking at the table, hobbling and pecking like hens over the slightest little thing—” She whipped her hand to her mouth, gagging. “Ooh, see? One word about hens and all I sees is runny eggs.”
He traipsed after her, watching helplessly as she bent over her chamber pot, retching.
“Just go on out somewhere,” she cried one Sunday morning, sitting at the table, pushing away a cup of tea he was offering her.
“Some bread,” he urged. “It’ll settle your stomach.”
“Nothing settles my stomach—and get that stuff out of my sight,” she groaned, brushing aside a clutter of little brown jars and glass bottles that were sitting in the centre of the table. “No wonder I’m sick, drinking all that old stuff they brings me—ginger wine and castor oil. Turns my stomach just to smell that ginger wine. And that sweet spirits of nitre? If you never had cramps in your life, you’d have them after a cup of sweet spirits of nitre. For the baby, for the baby. Cripes, that’s all I hears. How am I suppose to have a healthy baby if I’m poisoned with their tonics? Shoo—is that somebody coming? Lord, make out we’re going to Ragged Rock, Syllie, and that I’m in the room getting ready.”
“It’s probably Mother.”
“Go let her in then; the stoop’s nothing but mud. Where’d the summer go, Syllie? I don’t remember nothing of the sun for ages, and it’s not your mother I minds, even though I know it’s just you she’s checking on. Don’t argue with me,” she cried at his protest. “Why else do she bring supper every evening, unless she thinks I’m not feeding you?”
“She’s making sure you’re eating.”
“How come she never brings breakfast, then, only supper when she knows you’re coming home? And how come she’s always bringing turnip when she knows I hates turnip?”
“Oh, Mother don’t think like that; she loves turnip, is all.”
“Bugger it, Sylvanus, it’s enough I got to keep a bit of porridge down and not to be smelling boiled turnip. And that Suze, ugh, I rather sit down with Old Maid Ethel
and her pigs. Worse thing I ever done was stand to her youngster. Now she thinks she’s my mother—here most every day, preaching, Move, move, you got to move, Addie, else the baby will grow onto your insides. Mother of Christ, what do she think I does, lie in bed all day long? Certainly, that’s what they all thinks, anyway.”
“That’s a sin, Addie. She’s always trying to help and you does nothing but mock her—shh!” He rose as Suze pushed in the door.
“Not stopping,” she said, poking in her head, a rush of wind instantly drafting the kitchen, “just seeing if you’re going to church this morning. I thought I’d walk with you.”
Adelaide flashed a false smile. “Not this morning,” she said brightly. “But you’d better hurry on, else you’ll be late.”
“Phooey, I worries about being late now. Old Pastor Reeves is preaching this morning. I allows I’ll be asleep before he gets through his first prayer. How you doing, Syllie, b’ye? She got you wore off your feet yet, doing for her?”
“I does for myself,” cut in Adelaide.
Suze gave a loud laugh. “Not like me, then, when I’m carrying. I drives poor Am so hard he don’t know if he’s Angus or Agnes half the time. Well, then, you’re sure you’re not coming? Well, sir, you’re the strange one, going to church when there’s nobody there and staying home when she’s full.”
“Rather my own preaching on a Saturday than sleeping through the parson’s on a Sunday,” said Adelaide. “Well, come in or go, then,” she added. “The draft’s blowing out the fire.”
Suze’s smile faltered. “Well, I’ll see you, then,” she said, a flush tinting her cheeks. “See you, Syllie.”
Sylvanus nodded, a brief smile touching his lips as he helped close the door behind her. He turned to Adelaide, his mouth tightened with anger. “Cripes, no wonder they thinks you haughty. She was only wanting to walk to church with you. Nothing unreasonable about that, is there?”
“If my head wasn’t hung over a piss-pot, it mightn’t be. What the hell, Syllie, everybody knows I’m bloody sick, yet they still all keeps coming,” she ended up shouting, “and that’s your mother I hears coming there. Did you fill the buckets yet? How am I supposed to make her tea when you won’t fill the water buckets? Nothing unreasonable about that, is there, me wanting the water buckets filled?”
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