Donovan's Station

by Robin McGrath

  “I’ve a deadeye, Missus,” he said, and held his hand out to me, palm up, as simple and plain as a child.

  “And what is that to me?” I asked, not in an unmannerly way, for I had no reason to feel hostile. I was merely curious.

  “I will be little use to you on Monday if I do not do some-thing for it now, and old Scrappy Jack can barely piss straight without someone telling him to, so if you want your field ready before the snow falls, you will need me to see to it. And I cannot fix a deadeye on my left hand, since I am contrary.” It took me a moment to realize he meant that he favoured his left hand rather than his right.

  “Sit,” I said, and tapped the table to indicate where he was to settle. A good worker needs looking after, just as a good horse does, and I had no reason to think this man was not earning my dollar honestly. He came forward and waited with a stillness and patience that I well appreciated as I rooted around in the barrel chair in the corner for a bit of wool and a needle. “Let me see the gall” I said, once I had found what I needed, and he turned his hand, palm upward, on the table. In the middle of the palm was a hardened blister the size of a shilling. Settling into a chair, I laid out my instruments—a hank of wool, a needle, a jar of hardened pork fat, and my smallest scissors. I lifted his hand into mine, and was suddenly, awkwardly aware that my own hand was as large and as callused as this young labourers.

  “It’s been a trouble all summer,” he said. “Mostly I ignore it, but the gall just gets bigger each time.” He was not complaining, just telling me. I took the bit of wool and dipped my fingers in the fat before I began to twist it into yarn. He said nothing more and I said nothing more. For a full minute I tried to thread the yarn into the needle, but my close-vision had recently begun to fail me and even with the stiffened yarn I was clumsy.

  “Let me,” he said, and taking the needle and yarn from me he quickly threaded them.

  “Are you certain you trust me to do this?” I asked, and I was surprised to hear a slightly unsure note in my own voice.

  “I have been eating your cooking for three days now, and you haven’t poisoned me yet,” he replied with a laugh. “In fact, I can hardly remember the last time I ate so plainly and so well.”

  “I cook plain because that’s what the men want,” I replied quickly, even more astonished at the hurt note in my own voice than I was at his praise. Most men notice what you give them to eat, but don’t think to comment if it is good, only complain when it is not.

  “I trust your hands even if I don’t trust your eyes,” he answered, and once more placed his hand in mine. I took the threaded needle and quickly pierced the gall, drawing the greased yarn through so that the two sides were opened, and then I quickly snipped off the ends so that there was about an inch of yarn left in the palm of his hand. I bedded the gall in a bit of raw wool and bound it with a strip of linen.

  “Done,” I said, laying the scissors down on the table, and trying to look as if I was sure of myself.

  “And well done, I’d say,” he responded, and laughed. “Has your eyesight gone recently?” he asked. “My sisters all lost their close-vision when they stopped having babies.” I didn’t know where to look. A common labourer, in my own kitchen, saying such things to me. He must have noticed how I stiffened, for he immediately pushed back his chair and stood. “Forgive me if I have been too familiar,” he said, not meeting my eye, which would have undone me altogether. “I was a great deal with women in my early life and I forget sometimes that there are things that are not remarked upon outside the family.” And before I knew it he was out the door.

  I did not see Mr. Donovan the next day, for I went over to Topsail to attend mass, and stayed the night there visiting with the priest’s housekeeper, Mrs. Coady, but on Monday evening when I got back, he stopped me as I was going to look at a cow that had been sick.

  “I am looking for a place for the winter, Mrs. Aylward. I was wondering if you could help me,” he said, as he held the barn door open so I could pass through.

  “We don’t keep anyone over the winter, Mr. Donovan, I’m sorry,” I answered.

  “I’m not looking for a berth,” he said, most politely. “I am going to speak to Mr. Smyth about using the tilt in the back wood-lot on his property, in exchange for working on his fences. But I understand from Mr. Walsh that you are going into St. John’s tomorrow to get your winter provisions, and I thought perhaps I might go in the long-cart with you. If the matter is settled, I could carry back some things I will need.”

  I thought about his request as I examined the cow, which did not seem particularly unhappy, having consumed a half gallon of blackstrap molasses that morning, according to Kate. The man was civil and there seemed no reason to refuse him.

  “I’d be glad for the company, Mr. Donovan,” I said, “particularly if you will give me a hand loading up my own things. I find the storehouse boys at Ayre’s are sometimes careless in the way they stow the barrels and I’d rather not lose my flour on the road.” I paused for a moment and then drew a breath and risked being thought a gossip. “A word about Mr. Smyth—he’s a capable, honest man, but he often leaves his memory in the bottom of a glass, so when you speak to him on business, address your remarks to him but make sure Mrs. Smyth is at hand. She is the real brains behind that operation. That way, whatever terms he agrees to, you can count on them remaining the same.”

  “I appreciate your advice, and I should like to offer some in return. I am told that you can buy spectacles for a very reasonable sum at McMurdo’s. Unless, of course, you are one of those women who prefers to look well than to see well.”

  The man was as brazen as a robber’s horse. “Do I look like that sort of woman?” I asked, shaking my apron, which as usual was covered over with an old flour sack to keep the dirt of the barn off my kitchen clothes.

  “No, you do not, which is why I make the suggestion.” He told me later that I was as indignant as a wet hen, which may or may not have been the case, but he certainly looked highly amused at my reaction.

  In any case, we set out the next day, and I was careful that the sacking and the apron were on the back of the kitchen door, and my hair and dress were tidy and clean, and by the time we got to the Military Parade I had forgotten all about his boldness and had found him a pleasant and thoughtful companion. As we drove into the town, I began to think about the extra items Johanna had asked for, and took out a slip of paper on which she had written her list.

  “Well, Mr. Hawkeyes, can you read this for a blind, old woman,” I said, mocking us both and waving the paper under his nose.

  “No, Missus, I cannot,” he answered with a smile. “You will have to make McMurdo’s your first stop.”

  “Enough of your nonsense,” I laughed, “just tell me what’s on the list and I will think about McMurdo’s before we head home.”

  “Really, I cannot read it for you. I can manage a little print, but I never learned cursive at all, and I am totally unable to write so much as my name.” He did not seem bothered to make the admission, but I confess I was much surprised, for he seemed a sharp enough man, and exceptionally well spoken even if he was a labourer.

  “It’s the result of being sinister,” he added, holding up his left hand, healed now from the deadeye. “I went to school to a brutal little hunchback, down in Broad Cove, and the master would put the chalk in my right hand, and before you know it I would suddenly feel his belt across my back and discover to my great astonishment that the chalk was inexplicably in my left hand again. He told me it was a great sin I was committing, but I felt no guilt, and didn’t even know I was doing it.” He smiled wryly as he rubbed the slight scar in his palm. “After two weeks there wasn’t a patch the size of a penny on my hands and legs where he had not applied the strap, and despite his tender ministrations the chalk still made its amazing leap from my right to my left hand, so I gave it up. I accepted the beatings but I got tired of standing with a ten-pound Bible over my head all day. My older sisters taught me the alphab
et, but I have never been able to piece together more than a dozen words on paper, and those only the most common ones.” He imparted this news almost cheerfully.

  “I took a good many of the best from Miss Lacey down in Petty Harbour,” I told him, “and I could read and write better than she could when I arrived in her school. I just found it easy, I suppose. She married an old widower more than twice her age and my former schoolmates tell me he paid her back for her temper many times over.”

  Mr. Donovan laughed. “And Mr. Belbin got his reward, as well. He had a tame pig that followed him everywhere, broke into the gardens and tipped over the gurry buckets and nobody dared stop it. One winter day it got into his mash bucket and, drunk as a lord, it attacked the man, took a piece out of his backside the size of his hump. He could never sit down comfortably again and spent the rest of his miserable life on his feet.”

  Then Mr. Donovan took the reins out of my hand. I’ll mind the horse while you speak to Mr. McMurdo, or Miss Johanna will have to do without her few things until winter.”

  So I went in and got a pair of spectacles in a tiny hard case, and when I came out there was Mr. Donovan waiting and I climbed up in the cart next to him.

  “So, what is it that Miss Johanna wants?” he asked. He was trying not to smile, and I was trying not to blush.

  “I’ll go over her list later, after I go to Ayre’s,” I answered, busying myself with my basket which suddenly needed close attention.

  “I thought you weren’t that kind of a woman,” he said, and this time the big grin was unstoppable.

  “Oh, very well, you win,” I replied, and took out the little black case and the list. Once the spectacles were fitted on my nose, I looked him straight in the eyes, but of course he was suddenly very blurry for the glasses were only good for close up.

  “Very handsome,” he said. “Very dignified.” And to my astonishment there wasn’t a hint of mockery in his tone. “And now I shall leave you to do your shopping and when you are finished your business and I am finished mine, you will find me at Mr. Forans store eating his excellent ice cream, after which we will load your provisions and, with luck, my own as well.”

  And that is how Mr. Donovan came into my life, as pleasantly and as quietly as a sunrise in summer, though of course it took several more months before I realized what was happening. Min had ructions when she saw what was coming about, and said I was making a fool of myself with an ignorant young lout who wanted nothing more than an easy berth. Even the harsh words from Johanna did not distress me as she hoped, for I knew by then that he was the kindest and gentlest man in the world and that he loved me even though I was ten years older than him and could bear him no sons or even daughters.

  It is such a mystery that I found it easy to love Mr. Donovan without trying at all, and couldn’t really love Paddy although I tried with all my might. You cannot know who you are going to love or why. I have attempted to keep this in mind when I see the Big Galoot making cow-eyes at Kate. I have tried to tell her that she is free to make her own choice regardless of what I or anyone else thinks, but she is not as stubborn as me and he does not have extra courage to give her such as Mr. Donovan gave to me.

  July 6

  Clouds, but pleasant. Mr. Conroy came for supper, with his wife and several of the older children. I was not expecting them but managed a fine platter of trout, and cheese rarebit for the young ones. Mr. Conroy seemed somewhat uneasy and asked me in private what I thought my mother’s chances were of recovering her speech. He then requested permission to show any of Mumma ‘s papers related to Bishop Fleming to a representative of the Archbishop (Father Roche?) and implied that there was some talk of Beatification. Mumma never kept letters and things, burned them as soon as they were answered, and I told him so. Dermot, who I happened to mention it to, said Roche would sooner see Mumma’s Bishop frying in hell than Beatified. What a shocking tongue that man has. I told him what I thought of him. Fr. Roche is a priest!

  Mr. Reid has sent out four bottles of Hunt’s Port, to stimulate my appetite. It was very kind of him, but I expect it will do about as much good as the pan of sea water Mrs. Coady put under the bed to stop the bed sores. The paralysis is fading but I am so weak that I am as good as paralyzed anyway. Still, I can utter a few words in recognizable form, which is a useful skill though not one I choose to exercise very often any more.

  When Kate brought the glass of port with a spoon, I was able to give her a smile and waggle my finger at her to drink it herself. She did too, which surprised me. She sat on the side of the bed and stared at the ceiling, much as I do myself these days, and said nothing but just drank the wine like a good girl. I suppose she has a great deal on her mind now, what with the hotel to worry about and the Big Galoot to nail down, if that’s the route she decides to take.

  Kate was always a good girl. I thought she was too good to live, at first, for she didn’t even cry when the midwife baptized her. Oh, I was so angry at Paddy. I decided that I would keep the midwife for the full ten days, even though it cost him two pairs of his best boots, and I did nothing but lie nursing the poor scrap of a baby while the midwife fended off Johanna and Min, and gave Paddy a feed of tongues whenever he dared to complain or talk back at her. On the up-sitting day, I decided we were both going to live after all, and when the midwife suggested I come down to the kitchen I pulled myself together and got into my proper clothes.

  She had tea laid out on the table, with the groaning cake which was just a bit of raisin bread, and five cups. There was me and the midwife and the two little girls, who were barely able to see over the edge of their cups, and then Judith, who was living in behind us at that time. Paddy never used her name, just called her “the barrel woman” as if that was all there was to her. I’d seen her now and again, coming and going to work or helping Mrs. White get the clothes in when the soot from Newmans was coming down and marring the clean washing, but we’d never spoken. It was the midwife who brought her in—said I needed a guest to eat the groaning cake.

  Judith was a fine woman, for all her rough ways. I’d never had a friend before, never needed one perhaps. After the mid-wife went her way, Judith would stop now and again to empty the night soil for me, for I was weak as a newborn myself, after Kate. She knew Paddy didn’t like her stopping in and always slipped out the back way when she heard his footsteps coming through from the shop. A few months later, when I thought I might be that way again, I told her and had a little cry and she brought me a bit of tansy, made it into a tea, and watched while I drank down all the bitter stuff. I’d seen women with the tansy tucked into their bonnets, to keep the flies off, but I didn’t know ‘til Judith told me that it was good for women’s complaints. I tried it once more a year or so later, walked down by Rennie’s Mill where I knew there were plenty of golden buttons, and it brought on the flow and after that I never got into that condition again before Paddy died. Towards the end I wouldn’t let him put a finger on me anyway, I was that angry.

  I look back now and it is hard to know why I got so enraged. Accidents happen—even the most vigilant mother must take her eyes off a child now and again. It happened to me once with Min. The door didn’t latch behind me when I came in from the yard, and she slipped out and was gone for at least half an hour before I even missed her. I was frantic, sent the men from the shop out into the rain to search for her, imagining her dead under the wharves or kidnapped by a Spaniard who was even then sailing out the harbour. They found her in an alleyway, up by St. Patrick’s, with a rainspout from a building tucked inside the neck of her dress at the back. The downpour was sluicing over her, and she was sitting in the middle of a pool of water, enjoying herself tremendously. To this day she claims she loves the feel of summer rain on her face.

  Yet it seemed to me that Paddy had been particularly remiss, though I know in my heart that he loved the girls. It was a holiday, not St. Patrick’s Day but some day later in the spring, and I was cutting a dress for Johanna. Even at that age she must have a
fitted dress, not a chemise like her sisters, and Paddy offered to help me stitch it. He always gave in to the girls, wanted to see them dressed like little ladies, and since he could sew a fine seam—better than I could, if truth be told—he would help me and coax me into adding deckers and lace enough for any princess.

  Paddy had a message to do over in Maggoty Cove, so he took the two small ones with him and left me in the kitchen with Johanna in her shift, trying to give a waist and hips to a child who had none yet. It was a nice holiday for all of us. There had been a fine sprinkling of snow and Kate was wearing her first proper clothes, and a leghorn straw hat with pink roses and ribbons on it that Paddy had bought for her. She and Mm looked so sweet and ladylike, going down the street in their best boots, trying to put two of their footprints in each one of Paddy’s footsteps that had melted the snow on the road. Their little legs could hardly manage and he shortened his stride, so he was like a duck with its young ones tagging behind.

  I don’t know how long they were gone, but I had the dress cut and Johanna had gone off to visit a friend over in the lane, when Paddy came back with Kate wrapped in his jacket and tucked under his arm, and Min hauled along on his coattails. Kate was soaked, blue with the cold and shivering. They had met up with a man Paddy used to work for, and the two men had been talking while the mans little boy took the two girls down to the Lower Battery. The children had scampered down the cliff path to the water and climbed into a small boat moored there, pretending to sail around the harbour. The boy used an oar for the push off, and when the boat jerked to a stop at the end of the mooring line, Kate, who was standing in the stern, fell into the water. Mm, God bless her, reached out and grabbed her by the hair and held on while the boy went screeching up the path to get the men.

  I took Kate and stripped off her clothes, and sent Paddy out back for a bit of blasty bough to get a hot fire going. It was all very frightening though not really anyone’s fault, but then I found the hat squashed into Paddy s coat, bleeding pink all over the straw. Kate, who was looking better every moment, grabbed out for the hat and pulled it under the quilt with her. Min told me that even after the men had pulled Kate from the water, Kate had howled and fought until Paddy got in the boat and fetched the hat out from under the stage.