Donovan's Station

by Robin McGrath

  By the time I got home with Kate, for Johanna and Mm had stayed behind to help with the teas, my own place was half overrun. You’d think those townies had never seen a common cow, the way they gawked at my six, and the ladies were clucking and looking in the windows of what they called my “quaint little cottage.” “Just like a dolls house,” one of them said. I was as polite and helpful as I knew how, but I didn’t think I was going to like having a railway in my back yard if this is what it led to.

  It was a fine, sunny day, not too cold, so most of the ladies and gentlemen were walking about by the river and on the road, and after a time I was able to get back to my work. Towards the latter part of the afternoon, Johanna turned up with a lady she introduced as Mrs. Sands, and said she had offered to show her about the place. I was not pleased, but didn’t wish to embarrass the girl by being inhospitable, and as it turned out Mrs. Sands was a pleasant and intelligent woman, who asked sensible questions about the hens and geese and even gave me a recipe for tonic to feed to the goat, which had been out of sorts for weeks.

  Johanna set the table while I showed Mrs. Sands around and I think she was favourably impressed by the tidy way we kept everything. I had a nice bakeapple tart set aside for supper, and we had fresh bread Johanna had made herself that morning, with our own butter and cream and jam. There was a dish of eggs, and beets dressed with vinegar and mustard seed, and a slice of smoked ham that I had prepared myself in the fall, for I was able to get into the root cellar without fear of the frost getting in, it being such a mild day. I was glad of that ham after, for that night the temperature dropped like a stone and I’m told the harbour froze from Chain Rock to Riverhead in just two hours. I didn’t dare open the door to the root cellar for ten days straight.

  Once I discovered that Mrs. Sands knew Mrs. Smyth, I was able to relax and enjoy the unexpected company. I hadn’t realized just how unused I was to receiving guests, or how much Johanna missed having someone other than myself to talk to and learn from. Later, when Johanna received an invitation to visit the Sands family in town—enclosed with a letter from Mrs. Smyth—I was happy enough to let her go, although I think I knew it was the beginning of losing my daughter. Father used to say your children are only on loan, and that is particularly true of daughters.

  When the train turned and headed back to town, I stood with the girls and waved good-bye, and I felt a little differently about it than I had at the start of the day. In amongst those hundreds of people sitting on the red velvet carriage seats and standing in the aisles, was a familiar smiling face, not yet a friend perhaps but an acquaintance, that I had not had when the sun came up. Within the year, Johanna was gone to work for Mrs. Sands’ friend Mrs. Pedersen, and I had married Mr. Donovan, and then Min got the school in Blackhead, even though she was only fourteen.

  Nothing was ever quite the same again. It wasn’t that I minded the changes, for some of them were changes for the better, but we had been happy when there was just me and my three girls. There were times, even years later, when I looked back with longing on those days when, snowed in or storm bound or even just on a rainy winter day, we stayed close to home and fire. We’d amuse ourselves with lessons and sewing or making some new concoction on the stove, and I might take the Bible down and read them one of the stories, Ruth or Jonah or Esther, one of the exciting ones, not one of the Begot chapters. All that came to an end.

  In May of that year there was another excursion for the members of Parliament, and this time I knew Mrs. Sands would be on the train, and Mrs. Smyth, too, as well as their husbands, and I laid on a tea that I would have been happy to serve to the Queen and Prince Albert. A month later there was the first official run to Topsail, with three closed carriages and an open one for the bands. The Walshes decorated their entire house with flags and banners, and I flew the Union Jack with the Native flag directly beneath it, although you could barely see them as our house was below the line then. The bands played “The Banks of Newfoundland” as they passed through the community, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s heifer got on the track and had its leg broken, so we all had fresh meat for Sunday dinner later in the week.

  I can’t say I was really surprised when the riots started later that summer, although “riot” is too big a word for what amounted to a handful of sleeveens and sluts throwing rocks. I had heard all the rumors about toll gates and expropriation of land, and I was a bit nervous about it myself, but to think of Pinkie Mercer leading the charge, her hair flying loose and those big feet of hers flapping out from under her skirts, is shameful. Those men were only trying to make a day’s wage the same as the rest of us. I thought to call it “The Battle of Foxtrap” was to give it a dignity it didn’t deserve, but I liked the bit in the paper where they referred to Pinkie as an “ancient virago” and said she threatened to “let daylight into the stomachs of these invaders” with a fish fork. Well, the invaders won in the long run, and the railway wasn’t so bad for Pinkie or anyone else on the route.

  There were some unexpected benefits from the railway, too. Where the track was put down, the trees had been cut and burnt, and when the cuts grew over with young birch and alder, it was ideal for rabbits once more. I got some hemp sail twine and set my snares again, for I discovered that Mr. Donovan loved a rabbit pie every bit as much as I did. When he’d see me making the paste, and the pile of vegetables on the table, he’d always say “The wind did blow and the leaves did wag, along came Keziah and put me in her bag.” This was just to tease me a little, for the real words were “along came a little girl,” and I was neither little nor a girl, though when he teased me I felt as if I were both.

  The railway made it easier losing the girls, as well, for they could come and go more often. After a few years, Robert Walsh gave an acre of land to Bishop Mullock for a school, and Min was given the post so we had her back at home for a time before she married. They called the school St. Ann’s. Some said it was named for Ann Fitzpatrick, because the men who used to go to her place for cards and a meal didn’t want their wives to know where they were and used to say they were going to St. Ann’s for a meeting. If that’s true, I’m sure the Bishop didn’t know that when he named it.

  After the Fort William station burned down in town and they built the new station, they decided to move the track down from the ridge into the valley. Then Mr. Reid and the governors had what Mr. Donovan called the Palestine Soup Summit and they decided to put the new station on O’Flanigari’s land, on the other side of the river just opposite us. They built that small bridge, so passengers could get to the road, and riot comcidentally to our new hotel.

  Poor Kate. The bridge went right over her favourite trouting spot and the footings destroyed the pool. While Johanna always used a rod and Min and I relied on poles, Kate had a talent for hand-catching trout, and she insisted they tasted better because they hadn’t been hooked or damaged in any way. She would sit on the bank in the spring and spot the quick flash as the trout moved under a rock and then, with her petticoats dragging in the water, she would stretch her arm up under the rock until she felt the slippery prey in the farthest corner and, almost without fail, she’d have it caught behind the head and flung up onto the bank in a second. Min tried it once and got an eel by mistake and you could hear the shrieks all the way up to Neville s Pond.

  But of course the biggest change the railway brought was Mr. Donovan. I can hardly remember how I managed without him. It wasn’t just the work, though the Lord knows that it was wonderful to have a man around for the heavy hauling, especially one who was so quick and clever with his hands as Mr. Donovan. It was more that I had someone I could be weak in front of. He teased me a lot, but not about the things that really hurt, and I never knew him to say an unkind word about me or anyone else. Just as Kate had a gift for catching trout and Johanna had a gift for putting a flower in a glass or pinning a brooch on a dress so that it was perfectly placed, Mr. Donovan had a gift for forgiveness. He saw all the weaknesses in my too-human heart and he forgave every one
of them.

  Donovan’s Station

  August 18th, 1914

  Dear Aunt Johanna,

  Auntie Kate has gone to town for supplies and I am looking after Nanny, but she has been asleep all afternoon and I can’t find the book I was reading. I think Dermot put it in the stove as I found what looked like the boards when I went to make tea for a customer. Poor Aunt Kate has enough to worry about so I didn’t tell her, and besides I think perhaps I deserved to lose it as I was so absorbed in reading that I forgot to check on the cows and the new one got out onto the track. Dermot found her just in time so at least we won’t be eating salt beef all winter. He didn’t tell on me about the cow, so I won’t tell about the book.

  Nancy Walsh calls Dermot ‘Blue Eyes’ (one blew east and one blew west), which is rather mean as he can’t help being born wall-eyed, but it does make me laugh when I think of it. As you may have guessed, we are still fighting but I have rather gotten over my intense dislike of him, which is just as well as I think we are all going to see even more of him in the future. The very last thing Nan said to me before she became ill was that I was to stop teasing Kate about him, and now that I’ve stopped I realize how much it hurt her. I wish I would hurry and grow out of being thoughtless half as fast as I am growing out of my shoes.

  Mama told me that I might be able to go to you next summer, and oh, how dearly I would love that. I really can be quite useful around a hotel—just not one that has cows—and I can’t bear the idea of coming here when Nan is gone. I think Aunt Kate will be making new domestic arrangements before long, and Mama is so absorbed in the shop and with Jimmy that she hardly notices me these days.

  I wish I had something cheerful to say to you, but it all seems to be bad news these days. Nan is so thin now you would hardly recognize her. The talk in town is of nothing but recruiting for the new regiment (Mrs. Miller says I might as well go to the Boston States, as when I grow up there will be nobody left here for me to marry because they will all have been killed by the Huns, which is not very flattering to our soldiers). There is bread pudding for afters, my least-favourite. But you-know-who likes it so we must all suffer.

  The blueberries are very good this year so Mama will be sending you a case of jam, which I guess is cheerful news, but that’s about the only nice thing I can think of so perhaps I had better end here.

  Please don’t worry about Nanny. She doesn’t seem unhappy. She just sleeps or talks to herself all the time, though it is such a mumble I can hardly ever make out the words. Auntie Kate tends to her as if she were a newborn baby, so gentle and kind. Now I’ve made myself cry, and I’ve probably made you cry as well. So much for trying to end on a cheerful note.

  Mama says to write and tell me what I will need to bring when I come to Boston so that I can begin the sewing this winter. I am longing to see you. It is so quiet and sad around here now, not like it was when Nanny was well.

  Your loving niece,

  Elizabeth

  P.S. The girl has quit again, and I shall have to tell Auntie Kate when she gets home.

  P.P.S. Is it true that the Sacred Heart girls do all their lessons in white gloves? I shall need at least a hundred pairs as I find it impossible to keep them clean even when I’m doing nothing whatsoever.

  August 18

  Lizzie spent the day here. Mumma dictated her recipe for Black Currant Jelly which went something like this:

  “Put berries and a little water in skillet. Bring to boil and let simmer. You will know yourself when they should be taken off the stove. Strain and add sugar which has been previously warmed. You will judge for yourself how much sugar. Now bring strained juice and sugar to a boil and let boil for as long as you think right. Put in crocks and seal. This jelly should be clear and firm and of good flavour. It will keep for years.”

  Lizzie gave me a wash today, my hair too, and then she combed and braided it back into its bun. When she held the mirror for me to see, I got a shock. I look like that little monkey Judith had, all eyes and skull. Paddy hated that monkey, more even than he hated Judith, I think. I always thought there was a resemblance between them—Paddy and the monkey—which might account for his aversion. They were both so small and had such a thin, hairy pelt, and they were never still, just jumping and twitching and jerking around all the time, never still for a moment.

  The first time Judith brought that monkey into the kitchen, it gave me such a turn. She had it down in her bosom, and when she drew back her shawl and there was the ugly little face peeping out with those big, cold eyes, I thought for a moment she had a baby there at the breast. Poor thing, neither chick nor child to love and then the best she could do was that ugly little monkey. There was a woman had a shop in the east end, on Wood Street, who had a monkey that her husband gave her when her baby died, and people used to say she really did put it to the breast. Judith wasn’t that touched, or if she was she was cute enough to hide it. I couldn’t imagine where she got such a thing, or where she got the money to buy it, for I’d been led to understand the nasty little beasts cost a pretty penny, and I was half afraid to ask. Not that Judith was ever a bad girl, but some of those women who worked on the wharves were so pressed to make a shilling to feed their families that they would sometimes accommodate a sailor out of desperation.

  She told me she got the monkey from a man on a boat from St. Peter’s. They were offloading the contraband, and had only one keg left when the customs man came by—not the one they had paid off but another, for the shifts had been changed without notice. This was a new fellow in a spanking new uniform. One of the men took the keg of brandy and dropped it down into an empty five kintal cask that was sitting by the wharf. The customs man was going up and down the wharf, poking his nose into all the boxes and barrels, and it was just a matter of time before he saw the keg, which was exposed in the bottom of the empty barrel. Judith went over to one of the splitting tables and came back with a bucket of half-rotten cod livers and poured the oil into the barrel, and all over the edge and outside as well.

  It’s a pity men aren’t as particular about their ordinary clothes as they are about their uniforms, for it would save a great deal of work for their wives. That barrel was so big that there was no way the excise man could see down into it, or even tip it over, without getting a good hold on it and getting rancid oil all over his nice new government suit. Judith said you could tell by the way he was looking around him that he suspected, so she went and got another bucket of the foul stuff and slopped it over his boots as she passed him to pour it into the barrel. The keg must have been made by a very conscientious cooper, for the brandy survived not only the drop off the Frenchman’s shoulder into the barrel, but it sat in that oil for two days before they could get it out without being caught and there wasn’t a whiff of anything but the best Napoleon when they drained off the contents.

  Paddy said Judith should have asked for the brandy instead of the monkey, but that’s just because the poor creature bit him when he tried to make it do tricks. Judith had to have some comfort in her life. She used to say “I kill myself on the wharves and when we clew up, I know I won’t have a copper to put on my eyes,” and it was true, too. When the poor monkey got sick, she went to Dr. Cuddihy because he was the only doctor who would look at the creature, but he just poked it in the belly a few times and then took her money. She sat with it in the corner of my kitchen, near the stove, and coaxed it to drink the St. Jacob’s Oil off a tiny spoon I had from Mother, and when it died, even Paddy was careful not to make fun of her grief.

  It wasn’t long after that I was coaxing Paddy with the spoon myself. I told Judith he’d probably got a dose from some girl down behind the courthouse, but given the way Paddy ate and drank and lived, it’s as likely he just suffered from a bad gut. After the shop closed in the evening, he’d take tobacco and rum and a plate full of doughboys and eat them standing at the table. Then it was off to the races on Flower Hill, or dancing on the tables and playing the concertina in some hell-hole grog shop
until all hours of the morning. It would give anyone the cramp.

  It started off easily enough, with a bit of griping and complaining and Paddy off his feed for a week or so, but then it got worse at night and off he went to Dr. Cuddihy for a cure. Inflammation of the bowels, Cuddihy told him, and wrote up a recipe for Mr. McMurdo. I don’t know how much of the medicine Dr. Cuddihy told Paddy to take, but he was never a man for short measure, so I expect it was a good dollop. Paddy wasn’t one to hold back, either, and he seemed set to make a thorough job of his own destruction. He was swilling the stuff back at a great rate, and sending Johanna or one of the apprentices down to the pharmacy every day or so for another bottle, until Mr. McMurdo refused to sell him any more. By this time, Paddy had the colleywobbles and was on the chamber pot half the night, and his hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold an awl.

  I thought he was wasting his time taking that old stuff Cuddihy suggested, but he was so miserable, even snapping at the children, and the black dog was so well settled onto him that I was ready to do anything he wanted just to stop his griping. It was Judith who reminded me that McMurdo wasn’t the only chemist in town, and she offered to go into the Cross and get what I needed there. Paddy’s tongue and mouth were so swollen by then he could hardly speak, and the spit was running out of his mouth and down his chin like a baby. He could barely sit up, never mind stand, so I had Judith get the medicine for him, but it just made him vomit. After that I sent for Dr. Cuddihy again, but it was no good for the doctor was on a randy and didn’t sober up for another two days.