The Channel Shore

by Charles Bruce

  He wanted to be alone, to deal alone with the wave of anger and fear that washed through him, seeing for the first time together Anse Gordon and his son.

  The cat lurched and crawled up Curries’ road. There were times when Grant enjoyed every minute of a common task. Like this one, or driving one of the trucks, or tramping the woods with an eye on the timber. Sensing a known hill, coming into view round a turn; sensing the look and feel of this country with which his life was linked, and which without thinking of it in just that way, he loved.

  Tonight, hunched morosely on the metal seat, he sensed nothing. A possibility came to him, sudden and shocking. Would Anse talk to Alan? Tell him . . . ? If he didn’t already know! He didn’t think so. Anse was too shrewd for that. For the present, anyway. It would be someone else. Again, that searing if: unless he knows already.

  Why hadn’t Alan left? Gone as he’d planned to go? Was it curiosity? Or something deeper, more secret, a fascination, rooted in the truth known?

  Why was the boy still here?

  All Grant knew was that he would not ask.

  Alan walked up through the pastures with Anse and Lon toward Frank Graham’s house. He had not missed the narrowed glance, the carefully veiled calculation, with which Anse had looked just once at Grant. The thought came to him that this had been the one unacted thing, the one flash of life uncoloured by an instinctive pretence, in this private drama they were playing.

  Private? Well, hardly. Not with Anse Gordon’s face in the same county with his own . . . For a moment he had a sense of the hidden thought and guarded conversation of the Shore. The concern for Grant Marshall and the members of his family. The curiosity, the interest. Perhaps, even, in one or two, the malicious hope . ..

  None of it open. None of it said in the hearing of Grant or Renie or Margaret or himself, or Josie Gordon. Or Anse, except perhaps for hints that would be broadly voiced by Lon Katen and his kind.

  And yet now that he was into it, it was not as hard as he had thought. The curious thing was that he could feel nothing for Anse Gordon except a rather definite interest, the interest you’d feel for anyone . . . The ancient villainy was there, and yet for him it was not personal. Not yet. It was almost as if this middle- aged Anse Gordon were another person, separate from that younger one. And this one he knew: the son of a neighbour woman, home after years away. It made the acting easier.

  They had been walking silently. As they approached the path up to Grahams’, Anse said, “Ever do much sailing, Alan?”

  Alan said, “Only in Grandfather’s flat. He put a centre-board in, one summer. We had a sprits’l and jib. On the inlet mostly. Sometimes outside.” He paused and went on. “I’d like to take a crack at it when you get her rigged.”

  Anse drawled, “Oh, you bet . . .” and walked on with Lon as Alan turned to climb the lower fields to Frank Graham’s.

  8

  After the first day of mowing at Graham’s, Alan climbed the upper field in the early evening, turned east along the Black Brook and stripped naked on the patch of sand where the brook enters Graham’s Lake. He carried clean shorts and a pullover with him and came back down the slope from the woods with his blood singing.

  Curious how the mind could adjust itself: once you faced a thing and acknowledged that you had to deal with it, it became part of a new personal pattern. The mind’s mechanism shifted to take care of it, leaving, still, margins for the range of feelings: pleasure, indifference, incidental annoyance. He recalled having heard somewhere the story of a prisoner who had taken delight in the companionship of a bug in his cell.

  Well, he was not quite a prisoner. He went into the house, slipped into a linen jacket and headed down the road. Katen’s was one of his hang-outs. He was sticking to the pattern of the usual.

  He felt that he was, almost, over the hump. He had met Anse Gordon in Josie’s kitchen and betrayed no trace of feeling. He had talked to Anse Gordon in the presence of Richard and Eva McKee. He had watched Anse Gordon and Grant Marshall together and been casual with them as they were casual. He had listened to the talk among the hauling crew, guarded and elaborately impersonal, and had joined, himself, in the speculation about Anse Gordon’s return.

  He had seen and heard nothing that was outwardly disturbing. Nothing beyond the sense of something unspoken, something in the silences. Nothing but the slanted grin on Lon Katen’s face and the calculation in Anse’s single glance at Grant.

  It was working out. The other things of course would have to wait. A tide of quiet desperation filled his mind at the thought of Margaret. One thing at a time. But soon, perhaps, he could start on that. Could safely go away, away from the emotional climate . . . Away among strangers where time perhaps could tell him what the answer was.

  There were times when he wished he was the kind of man who could find relief in a woman, any woman. But he knew from experience without considering it as any personal mark of merit, that he was not. There had been girls in England . . . Always afterward he had been bothered by a feeling that there should be a fondness, a closeness, but that this was something they did not value or really understand, and for that reason, something of which they were unworthy. A circle of dissatisfaction . . . He envied, almost, those to whom this did not matter. But if there had been little for him in women then, what hope of finding an answer in them now? Perhaps, among strangers, there was something else.

  In the meantime he must simply be himself.

  Tonight he wanted to see Buff Katen, feel the friendliness of Buff. The thought came to him as he walked past the Gordon place that he had no idea whether Lon’s son knew the truth. And that, personally, when it came to people like Buff he did not care who knew and who did not. ..

  From Josie’s kitchen windows Anse watched Alan pass. He waited a little, drumming his fingers on the sill, then rose and sauntered out through the back door.

  Whenever he saw Alan Marshall or thought of him—and the thought of him now was seldom far from Anse’s mind—he could feel a renewal of the tingling thing that had begun that evening- five nights ago—at Richard McKee’s. And a renewal of the question: does he know?

  He halted now on the hack steps, caught by an impulse to go back, to face Josie withdrawn in the dusk, and demand an answer. He rejected this inclination. To ask would be to show interest, to hint at a purpose not yet clearly defined in his own mind. It would be, also, a confession of ignorance. He had thought of asking Lon, but an inner distaste had kept him from doing so. An unwillingness to admit there was information he did not have. A distaste for the slanted grin, the grin saying (if the tongue did not): He don’t know if his own son knows him!

  Lon Katen was a good-enough hanger-on, a henchman whose lack of scruples matched his own. But ... he thought, as he walked to the gate and turned down the road, he did not want Lon, or anyone, assuming equality or edging into the confidence of his secret mind.

  So far, except for Eva McKees curtness and Lon’s occasional insinuation to himself alone (and there had been a certain pleasure in these), he had seen no hint of any break in the interested but matter-of-fact manner in which he was accepted at The Head. The sense of personal power in this remained, the feeling that at any time he could break the shell of protection these people had closed around Grant Marshall and his family.

  But the continuing calm was getting a little irksome. He found himself having to hold back the sneer and control the tongue . . . It wasn’t time yet.

  His fantastic ambition was becoming clearer.

  He had thought at first in terms only of the spectacular. The broken shell. The truth made public. The secret ended.

  Now he was thinking beyond that.

  He was thinking of possession.

  Fatherhood . . .

  A wild moment at Lowries or on the Head or in the woods at Katen’s Creek ... He was thinking of how you could claim the child of such a moment, after half a
lifetime, and make the claim stand up.

  He was not sure how he could do it, nor was his mind clear on why he wanted to—if in fact he did want to. Simply to show a power more persuasive than any these people here had guessed? Or—was it really this flush along the blood when he saw the boyAs he passed Vangie’s, stimulating memories of old associations passed through his mind. Vangie was living now with Etta, somewhere in the States. She must be—what?—sixty-five or so. Grant Marshall, Lon said, had bought the place for the timber on it. Grant . . . quite a fellow he had got to be, on the Channel Shore. The thought annoyed Anse. Anything about Grant Marshall afflicted him with the bile of an old contempt. And now . . .

  His musing was interrupted by a car coming up behind him— Wilmots’ rattle-trap. Lee Wilmot had Sam Freeman in front with him. They pulled up. Lee made a questioning gesture, “Just going to Katen’s . . .”

  Anse nodded. “All right for me.” He climbed into the back with the twisted boy Skimp.

  Old Felix was fiddling with a battery radio he had set up on the counter and muttering to himself. Nothing was coming through but static, blurring out the faint voice of an announcer in Sydney or Charlottetown. At the east end of the store Buff and Alan were playing two-handed forty-fives on an up-ended cereal crate.

  Alan turned as the newcomers entered. He grinned at them inclusively with a special welcome for the boy. “Hi, Skimp. We been looking for company. Come over here and take a hand.”

  The youngster flushed with embarrassment, mixed with gratitude at being noticed. He said shyly, “Hi, Alan,” and looked up at his father and added, “Well, I don’t know how ...”

  Cards would be banned under the code in force at Wilmots’, where Hat was boss, Alan remembered. He said, ‘Well, that’s all right,” adding mischievously, “You can have a drink with us, anyhow.”

  He went through the hatch in the counter, rummaged in Felix’s ice-box, uncapped three cokes and came back to draw Skimp along with him to the stools around the cereal crate.

  Felix gave up on the radio, turned it off, and looked up without interest. People with nothing better to do had been coming here in the evening for close to forty years. All he was likely to sell was a plug of smoking to Sam Freeman. If that.

  Anse sprawled on a case of canned goods, holding one knee in his hands. Sam Freeman stuck the stem of a pipe under his tobacco-yellow grey moustache, hooked a buttock over an unopened keg of nails, and got out the heel of a plug, chipping a pipeful leisurely into the palm of his hand. Lee Wilmot lounged over to the counter, dug out a crumpled one-dollar bill, and bought cigarettes. He lit one, holding it between thumb and forefinger almost reverently, in the manner of a man to whom a smoke is something real, an occasional luxury to break the monotony of labour, and let himself down to a backless chair, elbows on knees, watching Alan and Buff and Skimp.

  Alan was dealing showdown, three hands a deal, with no money up; but paying Skimp a nickel when the hand he dealt the boy was high. “It’s not playing cards, y’see,” he said. “It’s a prize you win . . . That’s all right, eh, Lee?”

  Lee Wilmot grinned tiredly.

  Anse said, “Better than some deals Lee’s had, I guess.”

  There was a slight cast of insinuation in it. A sardonic irony. Lee Wilmot was the the bright one of that family. Now he lived off Hat and Clem, making a day’s pay when he could.

  No one made any comment.

  Sam Freeman said finally, “How’s that boat coming, Arise?”

  Anse said, shortly, “All right. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

  Sam said, “What you plan to do, Anse, run a freight line?” and laughed heavily.

  Anse drawled, “Well . . . Not up the brook to Bogtown, anyway.”

  He went on rapidly, his voice turning friendly. “It’s something to do. Richard’s going to cut me a mains’l. We’ll have the cloth from Halifax any day now ...”

  The slightly hardened expression on Sam’s face relaxed at the softened tone. Anse felt a sense of relief. He was going to have to watch his tongue; he couldn’t afford yet to speak his mind with the old terse sarcasm, to stab and probe. He couldn’t afford to antagonize. Not yet. If it could be managed ... If he could swing it . . . the first public hint should come from others, not himself. And in something like friendliness, not anger.

  Anger was the danger. He felt instinctively that to sneer and to antagonize would get him nowhere, would widen the breach of time and habit between himself and Alan Marshall and make impossible the incredible triumph that tantalized his mind.

  Unless, of course, a bond could be woven first—a personal bond that linked him to the boy with ties of interest and liking. Anse hated the soft word affection, but there it was. A bond so strong that he could chance anger, chance anything . . .

  He said, meditatively. “A great fellow, Richard is.”

  Sam said, “Nobody’ll give you an argument there.”

  Anse went on, talking almost to himself, “You get a kick out of it, seeing a man smart at the things that’ve gone out’ve style . . . People had to be smart with their hands, years ago. And their heads. Richard’s an able man . . .”

  Felix had returned to the radio and at last had got it going. The ten o’clock news was coming in. Something about a conference of foreign ministers in Paris . . . Britain and the United States had served notice on France and Russia they were ready to organize their own zones in Germany as an economic unit . . . Three German ships were expected to be part of Canada’s share of reparations, it was learned in Brussels . . . Felix grunted, “Foreign stuff,” and snapped the receiver off.

  Sam Freeman said, “Well,” and yawned and looked at Lee Wilmot. Alan said, “See you later, Skimp,” as the boy trailed his father toward the door.

  Lee looked a question at them. Anse shook his head. “I’ll walk up.”

  After the car had spluttered into life and faded up the road, Alan rose and stretched. “Time I was getting some sleep. See you, Buff. Good night, Mr. Katen.”

  Anse went with him. It was fully dark outside by now. The fringe of spruce along the road made an irregular saw-toothed edge against the lighter sky.

  Going up the road, Anse talked about the boat, mainly. She was sound, all right. Soaked up just enough water, but there wasn’t a rotten patch in her planking at all. His father had certainly known how to plank a boat. He spoke of Stewart with a kind of wistfulness, the same tone he had used of Richard McKee.

  Alan was puzzled. This suggestion of softness . . . And the tone Anse used to him was one of easy equality, subtly different from that in which he spoke to Sam Freeman and Lee Wilmot.

  At Gordon’s gate Anse said, “We’ll have sail on her next week, likely. Don’t forget.”

  “No,” Alan said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  9

  Renie was lonely. There were times when it seemed to her that she was an outsider in the house, as though Grant and Alan and Margaret lived in an intimate circle of their own, from which she was excluded. She knew that what these three had in common was not intimacy, but the restraint of separate private preoccupations. Alike, perhaps, and perhaps related, but certainly not consciously shared. She knew also that the care with which they excluded her was not the formal reserve of intimates toward a stranger but an effort instinctive and affectionate to keep her untouched by troubling things.

  Within that circle of constraint an instinctive considerateness for others within the circle existed also, like the thoughtfulness that kept her out. Though private troubles were not shared, the recognition of them was, perhaps unconsciously. There was a studied naturalness, an artificial ease. Alan was best at this. Both Grant and Margaret fell into moody silences more often than before. The Room sometimes felt to Renie like a pressure chamber.

  It was understandable that Anse Gordon, coming out of the shadowy past like an embodied judgement, should tear
at Alan’s heart and Grant’s. But Renie could not see it all. She could not tell, for instance, what Margaret’s part in it was. She wanted to talk, to bring the thing out of the shadows in shared words. But, remembering, she could not do so. There were elements in close relationships that tied the tongue.

  No one to whom she could talk freely. Renie was not the kind of woman who could discuss the inwardness of self and family with neighbours she must live beside. She would not give hostages of confidence. Except perhaps for Mrs. Josie . . . But she could not burden Mrs. Josie with worries that were rooted in the heart and soul and flesh of Anse Gordon.

  On the third Tuesday in July Renie took a dipper and went down through the lower field to the pasture. Near Frank

  Graham’s line fence the last of the wild strawberries had ripened. These days you could buy as many cultivated berries as you wanted, but Renie liked to search out the sweet wild ones in the pastures. She walked slowly, hearing the sound of mowing machine and raker at Graham’s. Grant and Alan were busy there with old Frank and Dan. Years ago, when things were done by hand, haying time had been a season of its own, a month-long business of waiting for the sun, mowing with hand-scythes, shaking-out, turning, cocking-up against the rain, shaking-out again, bundling-up, hauling to the barn, stowing away. Now it was all machinery. They would make Frank’s place in a week or less and then turn to Grant’s.

  Renie felt a small resentment at being out of it. As a girl on Prince’s Island she had handled a fork, stowing away, and a rake behind the rack, raking after. But now Grant wouldn’t let either her or Margaret take a hand.

  She came to a place where long grass grew between cradle-hills, where wild strawberries grew long-stemmed and slow to ripen. She squatted there and began to pick.