Tsunami

by Maura Hanrahan

  “It is, sir,” William answered. “And very sad. But the saddest part of it is those that’s left behind. Lydia Hillier, Thomas’ widow, is expecting a baby any day now and she had two other young children, Caroline and little Benjamin, and she has no one to support her.”

  Dalton’s face blanched at the thought. He looked at the clear sea water and his eye took in bread dough in pans sitting on the harbour bottom, as if that’s where they belonged.

  William continued. “She was Thomas’ second wife and she lives with his two grown children, Harold and Georgina. Now I don’t know what’s to become of her. That was their family home, the Hilliers’—I suppose the older children can claim the house, Thomas’ grown children. They might—they aren’t too fond of Lydia, never took to her.”

  Dalton silently thought of how complicated village life always was, though artists and poets might render it simple and romantic. His own visits to his father’s hometown on the Southern Shore had taught him this. Meanwhile, he wondered how many Lydias he would come across on this sad voyage.

  “That’s three deaths so far, young man,” he said gently, trying to prod William on.

  “Well, the worst of it is the Hilliers, not the same Hilliers as Thomas, a different family altogether,” Lockyer said. “Mrs. Lizzie Hillier had her four grandchildren with her. Irene was over for a quick visit, her mother, Jemima, said. But her daughter, Jessie Hipditch’s three were there for the night. Their house was just about there, right near the water.”

  As William pointed and paused, Dalton and the men stared at the emptiness that now took the place of Lizzie Hillier’s house.

  “And now they’re all gone,” William said simply. “David and Jessie Hipditch lost their three children. Poor Jessie is out of her mind with all of them gone. Her sister, Jemima, is not far behind her with the loss of her only daughter, Irene.”

  “Who has lost their homes?” Dalton asked after a minute.

  “David and Jessie, sir,” William answered. “On top of losing their children, they lost their home, too, though Jessie doesn’t even care about that. They’re staying with Jessie’s sister, Nan. And Henry Hillier, he’s Mrs. Lizzie’s husband—his house is gone. He’s staying with Nan, too. He doesn’t want to rebuild. He thinks he’s too old. He’s sixty-nine. He says his wife is dead and four of his grandchildren are dead. My father thinks he’s lost the will to live. And if you lose that, my father says, you’re finished.”

  “Your father’s right, son,” Dalton said, stroking his chin, slowly, still surveying what remained of the Point au Gaul infrastructure. He couldn’t imagine how the people could rebuild in time for next year’s fishing season, not this close to winter, when they had enough to do to get enough wood to heat, repair, and rebuild their homes. In this part of the country they had to travel so far to get wood. He wondered when the tradition of going to winter quarters had died out here and why.

  The people here had so much need of wood now, they would have to buy it. Most people didn’t have that kind of extra cash, however. Dalton had been all over the island. If Point au Gaul was like most outports, there’d be a few families with five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars in the bank or salted away in their kitchen somewhere, and another handful with a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars, but the majority would have very little or none at all, maybe twenty dollars here or there. Most of the time there wasn’t much call for money. Fish was the currency of their lives, not dollar notes. In any case, that, too, had been swept away by the big sea.

  When William Lockyer and members of the Meigle crew returned in the lifeboat, Dalton walked across the deck to them.

  “Lockyer,” he said. “Did you find their bodies?”

  “Which bodies, Captain, sir?”

  “Oh, the children, I mean, the children,” Dalton stammered. “Did you find their bodies?”

  “We did, sir,” William answered. “We got Jessie’s three little ones that night and the women laid them out. But we didn’t get poor Irene for awhile. Her being missing was making Jemima’s grief all the more unbearable. We only got her body early yesterday morning. Her father, Joshua, found her washed up on the beach over there, just before you came in. He went searching every morning at dawn. He was determined to get her. Poor little thing, all beat up on the rocks like that and waterlogged. But the only thing missing was her left overshoe. She’s laid out up there now, though I think they got her covered, poor girl.”

  Dalton stifled his retching. He said nothing. He tried to think of sharing a pot of tea with Cora in the breakfast room in their St. John’s home. He walked back and forth on deck as the men loaded the lifeboats with sugar, flour, and tea.

  As they prepared to head into Point au Gaul again, he said, “William, you didn’t tell me about the third family made homeless.”

  “Oh, it’s poor old John Walsh, Captain, sir,” William said. “He’s an old bachelor in ill health these days. All his gear and food is gone, too. He’s awfully upset. The women are trying to console him. Don’t know what he’ll do from now on…”

  The young man’s voice faded away and Dalton’s sea green eyes fixed on a little house that stood with its back to the water. It’s a wonder the waves didn’t take that as a dare, he thought. He had spent his entire life on the water and had seen men swallowed by spume, crushed by sea ice, and numbed into statues by saltwater crystals. But never had he seen the Atlantic so cruel as the waves that had laced Point au Gaul that November night.

  21

  At Lamaline, Captain Dalton’s brow would finally have a chance to unfurrow a little. There, the members of the area committee sat down in the ship’s galley with the expedition personnel, all of whom were following the path taken by Nurse Cherry and the local men who escorted her. The members of the committee representing the strip of land from High Beach to Lord’s Cove introduced themselves quietly. They included C.C. Pittman, a Justice of the Peace and the committee’s chair, Father Sullivan, and Lewis Crews.

  “You know about the tragedies that have visited Point au Gaul,” Pittman said slowly. “But no one has died here in Lamaline.”

  “Thanks be to God,” Father Sullivan whispered.

  Captain Dalton took a crumpled handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. He blinked rapidly.

  “That’s not to say there isn’t a great deal of devastation,” Pittman continued. “Many stages have been damaged or swept away entirely. Dozens of trap skiffs are gone… it’s the same all along the coast, of course. And there’s even worse…”

  “Yes,” said Father Sullivan, speaking with a firmer voice now. “Poor Mrs. Hipditch, Fred’s wife. She has no house anymore. It’s quite beyond repair, I can assure you of that. The family has six children—the two eldest boys have just started fishing with their father but Fred is away in Corner Brook working on the new mill there, I believe. Poor Mrs. Hipditch has lost their store, their Madeira fish, and some food as well. It’s a sad case.”

  The priest lowered his grey head. Captain Dalton studied him.

  “Jim Hooper, too,” Lewis Crews piped up. “Jim and Lucy, their house is all beaten up and their stage is, too. Jim is not even in good health.”

  “Perhaps we can talk to some of these people and see what they think about their future,” Dr. Campbell suggested, taking a slim pen out of his breast pocket.

  “Jim’s still over in St. Pierre,” Crews responded. “He hasn’t been able to get back yet.”

  Campbell’s right eye widened.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Fudge, the M.H.A., said. “People here go to St. Pierre for all sorts of reasons, not just to get a bottle of rum. Many of them even have family over there. There’s a long history of marriages between people here and the French.”

  “There is no need for your rash reaction,” Campbell answered, turning to his government colleague. “I implied nothing sinister at all. I just wondered how Mr. Hooper could travel, given his ill health.”

  There was a
moment of silence before Dalton broke it.

  “I’m governed by the weather, gentlemen,” he said. “We have to keep a close eye on it, this being late November. So I suggest we keep these meetings to the minimum time possible and do our business in as expedient a manner as possible. Our focus here has to be on assessing the need and getting supplies to the victims. We’ve got a fair bit of ground to cover yet.” Then he added with the slightest of tremors in his voice, “And I’m sure we want to do everything we can for these stricken people.”

  Before the group dispersed, the South Coast Disaster Committee had commandeered all the stocks of coal available in Lamaline and Minister Lake had dispatched a ship from the town to North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada to get more coal for use in the villages of the southern Burin Peninsula. The committee also telegraphed an order of clothes to stores in the town of Fortune. A truck filled with dresses, coats, pants, and boots arrived in Lamaline that same afternoon. When the members of the local committee handed the new clothes out to families from High Beach to Lord’s Cove, frozen mouths broke into smiles for the first time since the great waves hit the shores that awful night. Little girls twirled on their toes, letting their new dresses blow full. Boys hitched up their new dungarees and nodded proudly. For the first time in days, the children of Allan’s Island and Point au Gaul began to feel like they wanted to put their coats on and go out to play.

  But everything Captain Dalton feared about Taylor’s Bay turned out to be true. As the Meigle approached the harbour—quiet as a graveyard though it was midday—Dalton gripped the ship’s rail and drew his breath in. He made a grim count; only five of the original seventeen houses in Taylor’s Bay remained standing.

  “Very worrying,” said Dr. Mosdell. “All those people crowded into those few houses, and they’re small houses at that. It’s a health menace to be sure. If one gets a serious sickness, it’ll spread like wildfire.”

  Suddenly heads began emerging from windows and from the sides of buildings; they put Dalton in mind of snails coming out of their shells. How different it is from sailing into a port and everyone comes out to the wharf to meet you, he thought. These poor people almost look afraid. Once outside, they went no farther than their windows and doors; they stood there, waiting.

  On Mosdell’s orders, the medical staff left the ship and dispersed to the five remaining houses, doctor’s kits in hand.

  When Nurse Rendell from the Meigle reached Deborah and Sydney Woodland’s house, she entered and said, “I’m so sorry for what’s happened…” Then she stopped, looked around at the cluster of people in the Woodlands’ kitchen and continued, “But you seem in better shape that I expected.”

  “Nurse Cherry’s been here,” came a little voice from a corner of the room. “And she told us what to do!”

  Deborah smiled. “She did. And we were lucky. We lost no food and I’ve been sparing it along. You’ll want to tend to some people, though. They’re homeless and have no prospects at all for the winter.”

  Deborah motioned toward a row of children who sat on a sunken daybed. The nurse nodded and turned in their direction. The girls and boys lazily swung their legs back and forth, the biggest child scuffing her bare feet on the floor.

  “We’ll get shoes for her,” Nurse Rendell offered, smiling brightly.

  “Their mothers are in the parlour,” Deborah said, in a quieter voice. “They say they don’t want to stay in Taylor’s Bay. They want to go to Fortune where they’ve got friends and family. They think they’ll be safer there.”

  Suddenly Nurse Rendell felt someone behind her. She turned abruptly and saw a small woman with great black eyes in a face the colour of the moon.

  “I’ll not stay in this harbour another winter,” she said firmly. “I can’t stand the thought of it.”

  Nurse Rendell opened her mouth to speak but closed it again when she saw the firmness in the woman’s jaw.

  That night three women and their youngest children slept on board the Meigle. The mothers had shaken Captain Dalton’s hand, pumping it, as they climbed onto the ship. Fudge, the M.H.A., had taken the Taylor’s Bay refugees under his wing; he’d see to it that they got clothing and boots once the Meigle arrived in Burin, he announced. Then he would travel west to Fortune Bay with them on the Glencoe.

  Now, in the sharp night air, Captain Dalton stood at the wheel as the little party slept below, feeling safer than they had in well over a week. He laughed softly at the irony of how being on waves rather than land reassured and comforted them. He would tell Cora about this, he thought, and, next to the fire, they would have a grand discussion about the complexities of the human mind.

  “She was reluctant to come, Captain,” Dr. Mosdell tut-tutted as he made his way onto the Meigle, tied up in St. Lawrence harbour after a snowy and windswept morning. “But I did manage to get her here.”

  “Welcome on board the Meigle, Nurse Cherry,” Captain Dalton said formally, bowing his fair head to the slightly stooped woman following the doctor up the gangplank. He could see that beneath her cap, her brown hair was unkempt and her eyes were narrow in the manner of one who has recently awakened. He guessed that Mosdell had woken her. Doctors are odd beings, he thought.

  “If anyone deserves a rest, it’s you, Nurse Cherry,” Dalton said firmly.

  “I should have thought that if anyone deserves a rest, it would be you, Captain!” Nurse Cherry answered quickly.

  Dalton drew back at the sharpness in her voice. He stepped back to let her pass.

  “One of the nurses will show you to a cabin, Nurse Cherry,” he said. “We hope you’ll be most comfortable on board.”

  Nurse Cherry stood erect and grimaced. She studied the deck and then the captain. “I don’t know who gave the orders to bring me on board,” she snapped. “But I had work to do, plenty of it, and I was interrupted in my tasks.”

  “I beg your pardon, Ma’am,” Dr. Mosdell said, suppressing a smile. “You were, in fact, prone on a daybed when I found you.”

  Nurse Cherry’s mouth opened wide but no sound emerged.

  “I mean, Nurse Cherry,” the doctor continued. “Not that you were sleeping the days away or that you had neglected your duty in any way. I mean that you had travelled along the entire shore in the worst kind of weather and in so doing had worked yourself into a state of exhaustion, so much so that you had collapsed in the middle of the day in a stranger’s house.”

  Nurse Cherry’s mouth still gaped open.

  “Ma’am, Dr. Mosdell is only concerned about your health,” Captain Dalton interjected. “As we all are. As we have moved from one village to another, we have heard about your visits, made on horseback and on foot, and your work, done at all hours of the night and day. Do you not think it is time for a rest?”

  “I am only tired, that’s all, not grief-stricken, like my patients. If I rest, what shall happen to these people?” Nurse Cherry said, her face the colour of a ripening tomato. “After all they have been through.”

  “You are not alone now,” Dr. Mosdell answered. “We have a medical staff on board, physicians and nurses both. The people here are no longer entirely dependent on you. The burden is off you alone.”

  Dalton waited for a look of relief to cross Nurse Cherry’s face but it did not come. Instead, her mouth remained hard and her chin, held defiantly high.

  “Gentlemen,” she said finally. “I resent the way you took me out of that home, making the decision yourself and taking charge of me as if I am not in my right mind.”

  Mosdell and Dalton exchanged quick glances.

  “My responsibility as a doctor extends to you, too, Nurse Cherry,” Mosdell said quietly. “When I see a woman exerted beyond a point that is safe, I have to do something about it, as you know. I think now we ought not to spend more time discussing it. It is cold up here, don’t you think? Shall we have some tea down below?”

  “I don’t think I want any tea right now,” Nurse Cherry answered.

  “Come with me, Nurse Cherry,”
Captain Dalton said. “I’ll find Nurse Rendell. She’ll show you what a comfortable bunk we’ve prepared for you.”

  He breathed a low sigh when the Englishwoman followed him to the cabin. In the hallway he introduced her to Nurse Rendell and turned quickly on his heel when he had passed her over. Up top again, he met Mosdell.

  “We’ll have her in Burin tomorrow,” he told the doctor. “And she can rest there a couple of days. I’ve arranged return passage for her on the Argyle.”

  “Well!” laughed Dr. Mosdell. “She could certainly use the rest! She’s wound up as tight as a drum!”

  Dalton thought of Cora and the kind words she unfailingly had for her elderly and frequently contrary aunts.

  “She’s been through a lot,” he said ploddingly. “She’s tired and overwrought, poor woman.”

  Before the Meigle pulled out of St. Lawrence, the expedition party met with the local committee and charged them with supervising relief measures as they had with their counterparts elsewhere. Meanwhile, Captain Dalton and his crew took account of the damage the tsunami had done to the town. The harbour was desolate; all the stores and stages on both its sides had been swept away. Little black lumps of coal floated in the harbour, like a torment to the cold people on shore. The winds blew dark ash off them. Cracked oars drifted in on the beach. Thwarts, broken in two, flopped onto the rocks, in a blunt offering. Women could only glance hard at these things and close their eyes. The men tried hard not to think of spring when the fish would start coming in. How would they catch it?

  When news of the situation at St. Lawrence reached Magistrate Hollett in Burin, he telegraphed Prime Minister Squires in the capital. As Squires read of the devastation in St. Lawrence, the largest settlement in the area, he clutched his chin tight and sucked in his breath. His face grew white as he realized that every time a message came from the South Coast the picture was more grave than originally thought. Worries over the disaster invaded his every thought. Squires lay awake night after night, shifting helplessly in his bed, wondering if his government had sent enough supplies. How would his government pay for the rest? It was almost a month now since the stock market crashed and the meaning of that event was beginning to sink in. As the days went by, the administration in St. John’s still did not have a good fix on the death toll on the lower portion of the stricken peninsula. That would only come with a full report from the Meigle.