The Channel Shore

by Charles Bruce

  Margaret said, gravely wondering, “She’s coming in!”

  Secretly she was afraid of Vangie Murphy. Something in the smile and the husky ingratiating voice set up a current of revulsion in her flesh. She felt this whenever they met on the road or on the rare occasions when in the course of her rounds Vangie dropped in to sit in Renie’s kitchen.

  Surprisingly, Renie had noticed this despite Margaret’s efforts to hide it behind a careful serenity. She kept Renie’s words in her mind: Don’t let yourself brood on things, or people, if they make you feel bad.

  It was all right to say that; but it was not Margaret’s way. The thing she had to do was go to meet a feeling, good or bad, accept it fully, puzzle out its qualities until she could see what made it so. She had never been able to fix in definite form her fear of Vangie Murphy.

  Josie said matter-of-factly, “So she is ... we won’t wind any more, now.” She gathered up the lapful of balled yarn, stowed it in her knitting-basket, and turned her serene face, with a murmured greeting, to Vangie Murphy coming through her door.

  “Mrs. Gordon . . .” The smile was expansive, but Josie was one woman Vangie never even started to call by her first name. “And Margaret ... I haven’t seen you for a dog’s age, pet . . . Just seemed I couldn’t go a step more without a rest, Mrs. Gordon. I’ll sit a minute, if you don’t mind.”

  “Certainly, Vangie.”

  Somehow in the way Josie Gordon always said it, there was no satisfaction at all in the use of the name. It was too remote, too kindly and vaguely sorrowful.

  “. . . a dog’s age,” Vangie said turning to Margaret. “My soul, she looks like Grant, don’t she, Mrs. Gordon? You’re the spit of your father, pet ... It comes out as they get older, don’t it?”

  She paused, and added, “Young Alan, now. He was down past my place the other day.”

  Vangie’s tone joined “the other day” with all the days along the Channel Shore. She had come into this house op impulse but the sight of Margaret and Josie Gordon was blending with her smouldering anger at Eva McKee, her dreams of years ago. The little runnels flared in the small audacity of smooth remembering words.

  “Just the other day . . . There’s not much McKee in him . . . not much McKee...”

  She was talking literally over Margaret’s head, carried along by a garrulous daring.

  “Took me back . . . years ago. When we were young, and your boy . . . When young Anse was a boy, going down to Katen’s . . . He’s the image ... it must remind you, Mrs. Gordon . . .”

  Josie said, “Vangie!”

  Vangie caught her breath and grouped her features into an apologetic smile, a parody of apology.

  “Oh!... yes ...”

  She glanced at Margaret and away again.

  Josie said evenly, “Margaret, you might as well run home. That’s all we’ll do today, I guess. Your mother may be wanting you. I kept you longer than I should’ve, maybe. You run home now, and come over tomorrow if you like.”

  “All right, Mrs. Josie.”

  Margaret said the words naturally and rose to go, but she was not through here. Her mind was on the undercurrents of this conversation from which she was being banished, and on her feeling about Vangie Murphy.

  While her instinct was shrinking from Vangie’s “pet” she had almost run it down. Part of it at least was fear of contact, of touching ... As she walked toward the door she stubbed her toe deliberately on the edge of the rag mat between the stove and table. Stumbling, she caught herself with a hand on Vangie Murphy’s plump knee; Vangie’s hand came up to catch her— “Oops, pet!”

  Margaret straightened and said, “Excuse me,” and opened the door to go.

  Part of her was satisfied. She was not going to be afraid of Vangie Murphy any more. Only the dislike remained, and a new nagging curiosity. She closed the door behind her and hopped down the porch steps.

  “Vangie,” Josie said, “you ought to know enough not to talk that way. Not any time. But in front of a child . . .” Her voice was scornful and exasperated.

  Vangie was soft and regretful.

  “I know, Mrs. Gordon ... It just came over me and I didn’t think. I was feeling . . . You know, I often think how hard it must be on you, Mrs. Gordon. Not able to—and seeing him brought up a Protestant, and—”

  “Vangie, hush!”

  Josie could not remember when her insides had been so harshly torn by anger. But anger was something she couldn’t afford. Anger was something that could serve only to harden this probing curiosity and malice ...

  It was odd how things like this could recur, in waves. She remembered the sly hints after Alan’s birth, after Grant had brought Hazel and her baby to the house from Copeland hospital. That strange time, when the bitterness of inner shame had begun to fade; when, through the voice and presence of Hazel McKee, she had begun to feel the tide of life continuing. The sly hints . . . You must be specially fond of him, Mrs. Gordon. The glances. The silences. At that time she had only begun to see how life could grow, healthy and even pleasant, from the seeds of shame. But her instinct had been right and the tone of her reply had been right. Trite, sententious and effective: I’m fond of all children, since I’ve none of my own ...

  Not in a dozen years had she heard a suggestion . . . There must have been talk. But mostly guarded talk, without malice, between men and women careful to say nothing that would rouse curiosity ... There was quite a bit of kindness on the Channel Shore. But now, perhaps, a wave... returning.She said, “Vangie, something wrong was done, years ago. Grant Marshall made it right. If people use the sense God gave them, there’ll be no one that even remembers—in time . . . Let me tell you something, Vangie. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep things ... If anybody’s vicious enough . . . There’s nothing I wouldn’t do ...”

  She checked herself. You couldn’t make it clear to anyone who didn’t know by instinct.

  All you could hope for was that such people would be dominated by the force of your person into accepting what you said. Josie was not overly optimistic. In people who gossiped there was little capacity for personal respect. For the second time that day she thought: It’s the best I can do.

  5

  On Friday Grant and Alan set up the stationary gasoline engine in the yard and belted it to the small circular Grant used for sawing fire-wood.

  They had not been out back since Tuesday. Wednesday had been a day of forced idleness, with high winds and snow and sleet. Thursday, the wind was still up; too unpleasant for the woods, Grant said. Today was fair and cold but he had said nothing about the Katen lot. They hauled the engine out of the shop and begun to cut into stove-lengths the year’s supply of fire-wood.

  A question asked itself in Grant’s mind. He ought to be thinking, planning, arranging for stumpage. Figuring, deciding whether he’d let Dan run the pulpwood-cut back of Kelley’s while he himself went on with work out back, preparing for a mill. Except for the few days’ work he and Alan had, put in, nothing was done....

  Why?

  This was the question which in various forms he had asked himself for days. Asked . . . while he knew the answer; the answer —itself a question.

  How could you throw yourself, whole-hearted, into anything— when the zest of life was dulled by a bitter and burning loss?

  It was only in these last days that he had begun to realize how much his son had figured in his ambition to saw lumber from the woods of the Channel Shore. The thought of a mill, of logs coming into the yard, deal going out, neighbours on a pay-roll: these things were all good; but the colour went out of them unless you thought of them in relation to one dark-haired youngster—the boy who was always there. Always wanting to work at whatever you were working at; always around the yard, always there across the stove in the evenings.

  There was no end to questions when you started to ask and examine; never an end ...


  He grew bitter with himself at his own inconsistency. You built up the idea of departure, planted it in the boy’s mind for his future’s sake. You tried to keep him from getting too closely wrapped up in home, too interested in the Shore. And then when the time came you started crabbing to yourself.

  What if it had come a few years early? You couldn’t have it both ways.

  You could keep him with you a year or two longer and run the risk of losing the curious tie, the instinct of blood relationship. Or you could send him away and keep that tenuous thing for years. Perhaps for ever.

  Loss? There was loss in it, either way. But the lesser loss was in departure, in the gamble to keep alive the long illusion.

  Or was it? Hadn’t you learned long ago—a knowledge etched in acid by slow degrees—hammers tapping on a barn wall, words across the muddy rows of a turnip field—hadn’t you learned that blood ties do not matter?

  The thing that matters—hadn’t you learned that this is the feel of fairness, affection, kindness, good nature? Between person and person? Hadn’t you tried to avoid possession, to treat your children as people, not merely kin?

  That was your theory.

  Well, then.

  Well, then, you were learning now that hearts don’t beat on theory.

  Suppose you could school yourself to take the chance of revelation. Suppose you took the risk and kept him home ... You were back then where it all started. How could you weigh the damage to a boy’s heart at the stroke of that shameful knowledge?

  Always at this point a shadow of doubt plagued Grant. Is it Alan I’m thinking of, or is it me? Is it the hurt to him that scares me, or the hurt to me?

  Another thought would come, then: the realization that behind the long plan for departure, education, life in cities, there had been a hoarded hope. Always a secret hope that for Grant Marshall’s son the Shore would be enough.

  Sometimes as he turned these things in his mind he would find his heart clutched by an old, a forgotten, panic. Again he could feel the reasonless thing that had crossed it, years ago, when he had sensed that Hazel was marked for death. And after. The knowledge that this, an end to living, had been the portion of both: the girl he had loved and the girl with whom he shared deliverance from the past. The sense that he, and all who touched him, were fated...

  He shook this off now as he had shaken it off then. To let the mind harbour such fancies . . . What was the word?—morbid. Morbid. Worse than that. It was close to being touched, unbalanced. The thing had never really gripped him; it was too far beyond the circle of reason. It had merely crossed his heart, the brief blinding fancy. . .

  He shook it away impatiently, the heart cleared by the mind’s reason. But Alan—and Alan’s going—There were things about this, now, that reason would not clear.

  The alternatives were too confused to be sorted out. The long argument, futile and endless, lived like a tumour in his mind. The rankling question, the hard conclusion. It was with him as he kindled the breakfast fire, as he turned the cattle out to water, as he worked in the shop, as he played checkers with Margaret in the evenings; as he lay in bed, listening to the soft lapse of Renie’s breath.

  It was with him now, under the irregular bark and chuff of the engine, the brief repeated whine of the saw as he and Alan loaded the tilt, heaved it against the snarling blade.

  There was nothing wrong with the plan. While Alan worked with him, through the holidays, he was out of danger. Beyond that was Halifax and the long reprieve. People knew the affection old Bob Fraser had for Alan. Knew he’d been after him to visit. Nothing wrong with that . . . Already he had told people, casually, that Alan was to spend some time with Big Bob. Nothing surprising in it if the visit lasted . . . lasted in the end until it merged with the road away ...

  Nothing wrong with the plan ...

  But there were days now when he grudged every minute of Alan’s absence; and yet found in his presence a continuing ache.

  Today, working with him at the sawing, watchful to stay between the boy and the whirling blade, his mind was laden with these thoughts. He worked silently, more than once conscious too late that Alan had spoken some casual word and gone unanswered.

  Grant shook his mind back into balance. The cold fact was that in a week now the boy would be gone, away from the danger of wagging tongues, away from ...

  He had better begin to get used to it And there were other people to think about. Long ago he had seen the unspoken thing growing between Alan and old Richard McKee.

  After dinner he said, “I’ve got to go down to see Rod Sinclair this afternoon. We’ll leave the rest of it till later. You might take a run up and see if there’s anything you can do for your grandfather.”

  Alan said, “All right. Sure.”

  Margaret looked quickly at Renie.

  “I guess so,” Renie said. “You might as well . . . I’ll give you Mr. Alec’s bread to take in while you’re at it. And you’d better go in and say hello to Uncle James and Aunt Jane. See how they

  The lower pastures were deep with snow. They kept to the main road, walking on the inside of the shoulders where sled tracks made the going easy. Bert Lisle was piling wood in Hugh Currie’s door-yard, with old Hugh, who had been sickly lately, wandering in the cold sunlight, muffled up in an overcoat. Alan thought briefly about Mr. Currie. A friendly absent-minded man. He had spent his early manhood away from Currie Head, Dad said, and come back and sent his son away in turn. People did come back, then, sometimes. But not often. Not for good, anyway. For a day or two, or a week every couple of years; like Stan Currie, who was never home long enough to share in anything that made up living, like haying or the herring-run.

  He never asked me if I want to go; he just said I’m going . . .

  He didn’t ask ...

  Well, then, the mind argued, tell him. Tell him what it is you want to do.

  He had thought of that, thought of saying—But how could it be said? How could you break the habit of acceptance when this was rooted in you as a part of life?

  He remembered how it had been long ago. Whenever he asked about a thing denied, the careful explanation had left him feeling childish, feeling he should have known without being told. And in these later years there had been something more than that. A kind of foreknowledge of what you wanted. And if there was something you couldn’t do, or something you didn’t want to do but had to, the explanation came without asking, in some casual aside. It was as if Grant knew by nature the need to make things clear.

  All you could say was, “I don’t want to go.” And if you said it you were saying good-bye to the warm wordless communication of needs and desires. You were questioning the judgment you had learned to accept. Rejecting the explanation you’d been given.

  Well, was that it? Or were you just afraid?

  Once, this morning, he had come close to it. A wave of feeling had submerged both habit and thought. He had turned, as they walked back to the wood-pile for another stick, beginning the words. Then he had seen Grant’s face, closed and hardened, his look turned inward on something personal and strange. Grant hadn’t even noticed he had been about to speak.

  That was failure. Thinking of it now as he walked the road with Margaret, Alan knew that this was something he couldn’t stand again.

  Alec Neill was working behind his wood-pile, pointing posts with an axe. He looked up and saw Margaret and Alan coming through his front gate and started for the house, limping slightly on his one bad leg which was twisted by arthritis. Alec lived alone now, since his wife’s death three years before. He had been a bachelor for years, had married late and fathered sons—Dave in California and Harry in Truro—and now was a bachelor again, doing his own housework as well as tending his salmon net in July and August and farming the year round.

  Alan grinned to himself. Next to Grandfather McKee’s, Alec Neill’s place was the one he
liked to visit best. Renie baked Alec’s bread for him; whenever he and Margaret took the loaves in, Mr. Neill met them at the back door with a grin in which there was a kind of shared amusement at the way he lived, but no apology.

  He said now as pushed open the porch door, motioning them ahead of him, “Come on in. Sit down a spell—if you can find a place to put your sitter-down.”

  Then, gesturing largely, to Margaret: “I don’t keep a very neat house.”

  Margaret said, “No, you don’t, Mr. Neill,” and perched herself in a rocking-chair.

  Alec laughed as he took the bread from Alan and stowed it in a wooden box with a leather-hinged top on the shelf back of the stove.

  Alan thought of what Mrs. Frank Graham had said: Alec had no one to make him take notice. Mrs. Hattie Wilmot was more specific. She said Alec’s place smelt like a fish-hut. It did smell a little like a hut, Grandfather McKee’s on the beach, or Alec’s own. A good salt and tanny smell. The hundred coiled fathoms of a coarse-meshed salmon-net-leader lay in a pile in one corner; in another the back numbers of all the magazines Harry Neill subscribed to in Alec’s behalf at Christmas-time. The unwashed dishes of at least three meals were piled on the table. Crumbs and crusts littered the checkered oilcloth. For dinner Alec had eaten a boiled salt herring. Its backbone still lay on the plate, beside a small heap of potato skins.

  Alec reached for a lifter and shook up the fire.

  “Don’t put wood on for us, Mr. Neill,” Alan said. “We’ve got to go on to Grandfather’s.”

  Alec added a couple of sticks of wood to the fire and reset the stove-lid.

  “I’m tired workin’ anyway. Think I’ll spend the afternoon in the house ... just lazy.”

  He eased himself into his private chair, a low-cushioned one he had built to his own special angles, and fingered his beard. This was something he had cultivated in the last few years for the fun of it, and, as he told Alan, to give the women something to talk about. “James Marshall’s got fur on his face,” he had said. “I got the same rights as James.” His eyes always laughed above the grey brush, the unkempt parody of James Marshall’s trimmed and tended beard.