She was met with frowns by Ben’s next-door neighbour on her step beating out a mat. “Here you is merry as a weddin’ bell. You’re not the first woman carryin’ a child.”
Maggie ignored her and went toward Ben. He took her hand, his voice tender. “You’re the first woman to carry our child.”
The neighbour, a mother of two sets of twins, gave her mat a last shake and called, “You won’t be dancin’ when your breasts bes in an infant’s mouth one after another for the next twenty years.”
Maggie went to lie in a hammock Ben had rigged between two trees. She lay watching a butterfly alight on a flower, a bee nestled inside its cup. She listened to the whispers of the garden, the chee, chee of a yellow warbler, a gentle wind rubbing against a leaf, grasshoppers rasping in the grass. She’d take whatever sweetness she could get from life. She’d do everything to make up for any thought of Jamie. She’d be everything Ben wanted.
One morning as Ben turned to her in triumph and moved his body over hers he spoke as if unaware that his thoughts were loud enough for Maggie to hear. “I’ve got something Jamie never had and never will.”
The words stunned Maggie. Her hand flew up and hit his face. He let out a gasp and dropped down beside her. They lay in silence, a wall between them. Maggie realized then that she was not the only one who carried Jamie in her thoughts. He was a shadow in Ben’s life.
Finally Ben spoke, his tone brittle. “There’s room in your heart for both of us but there’s only room in our bed for you and me.”
He’d never know that sometimes she pretended it was Jamie giving her the love he would have given her in marriage.
Once after she and Ben had quarrelled she ran down the road to tell William about it.
He rose from the settle saying, “Don’t worry none. A quarrel is not uncommon in a household. Mostly it comes from tiredness, yours and his. Then any little difference in opinion can start a spat. You puts a log in the fire and Ben puts a log in the fire and soon you got a cracklin’ blaze. Tongues leap and lap threatenin’ to burn everything black. If you wants to straighten up you have to lay down your logs and let the fire out.”
Maggie kissed his rough cheek and went to leave. He looked at her and a tear slipped from the corner of one eye. “Still, quarrel or not I’d take Mary Jane any way if only I could bring her back.”
“I know that,” she said. She was thinking, I’d take Jamie any way I could have him. She felt guilty as she hurried home to Ben.
Maggie laid a newly plaited mat on the floor, but when Ben came in from the barn and wiped his boots on it, she ran and grabbed it, rushing to explain, “It’s too good for here. I’ll make a brin one. This mat can lie across our bedroom floor.”
Instead she scrubbed it clean, dried it on the garden fence, and laid it across the foot of their bed to warm their feet in winter. She didn’t tell Ben that six months after Jamie’s loss she had gone to William’s house and gathered some of Jamie’s clothes. She made a quilt and when she had finished it she plaited a mat from scraps left over. She had wanted to bring the quilt with her. Instead she had decided that it wouldn’t be fair to Ben. Now the mat was at the foot of Ben’s bed and she knew that wasn’t fair either.
One morning Maggie woke with a rush of memory stabbing her heart. Ben felt her body go rigid and he pulled her into the comfort of his arms, his sleepy voice against her ear. “What’s the trouble?”
She couldn’t answer, wouldn’t tell him something that would hurt. She held the pain as steady as she could until it subsided. She fell back asleep and dreamed about Jamie dying in blackness under a sea of bodies.
Ben nudged her awake. “You’re talkin’ in your sleep. You’re calling, ‘Jamie.’” He tightened his arms around her.
She jerked away and sat up drawing her knees to her chest, her arms around them.
Ben gave her a keen look.
“It’s the day,” she said in a flat voice, “another anniversary of the Southern Cross’s disappearance. . . .” Her voice drifted like a thin trail of smoke.
Ben lifted up on an elbow. He spoke, his voice heavy. “Sometimes I wonder who you would rather have gone, him or me. Well I’m here and Jamie isn’t. He lost his life. I intend to spend mine.”
She felt a kick and looked down. Ben was giving her something Jamie hadn’t. She leaned to touch his forehead with her lips. “I was meant to have you and our children. God willed it that way.”
56
“Alvina won’t be doing much on the stagehead this June,” Jacob told Elizabeth. “I saw the midwife go up the hill. On her way down she told me there’s a sweet baby girl born this very morning, a frail little thing. I met George on the turn to Ma’s house. He said that the midwife told him Alvina will be able to help with the outdoor work after a couple of weeks.”
Elizabeth looked up from the baby she was holding. “’Tis a blessin’ to have it over, not to have to carry a baby while on the flakes.”
Jacob sighed. “Pappa is no good to work. Let him exert himself er bit a’tall and his heart fair beats out of his chest. He can look after the baby. That will take his mind off poor Ma’s passin’.”
William nicknamed his granddaughter Spindle Shanks because of her long, thin legs. While Alvina was on the fish flake he often sat outdoors beside the lilac tree rocking the deep-eyed little girl in an alder chair he had made. Her tiny hand clung to his fingers chafed and scarred from years of fishing.
Alvina detected something wrong with Nellie after she was only a few weeks old. She sent for Dr. Pritchett, who examined the baby, taking note when his touch made her whimper. He’d seen enough: soft bones, deformed ribs. He snapped his black bag shut. “My dear woman,” he said, “your child is crippled with rickets. Handle her gently. Her bones are soft and easy to break.”
Alvina stared at him as he went on. “She needs the sun when it is highest in the sky. Keep her head shaded. Cod-liver oil may improve her condition.”
Now and then while she and Elizabeth spread fish on the flake down from her house Alvina straightened her stiff back and rubbed her hand down her spine. She looked toward her house, a longing in her face. “Nellie Rita,” she called, her voice winging its way with love kissing the little one’s ears.
She pulled the old fellow’s scratched and dull monocle from her barbel pocket and slipped it against her eye. Her golden baby, a bonnet shading her head, lay fast asleep, tucked against the old fellow’s strong chest, blond curls spread on his shoulder.
Alvina smiled and turned back to the fish, hurrying to reclaim moments lost in catching precious sunshine. There was so much to do. In an hour the sun might withdraw behind a cloud and black clouds drop rain and the fish would have to be gathered, piled together, and covered.
William spent a second summer caring for his granddaughter. Whenever William heard Nellie Rita’s weak cry after she woke from sleep he lifted her from the pine cradle he’d made. The straw stirred ever so lightly in its casing. The child smiled weakly, her blue eyes meeting William’s faded ones. He straightened and cooed, “You be good, little one. Your mam’s on the fish flake.”
The little girl let out a sharp, whining cry and he told her, “No one knows how long you’ll be with us, no one but God and He’s not saying.” He cradled her against his chest, her head leaning into his arm. “Here you is lily-white and weak-legged,” he said. “You should be walkin’ around.” He held her tight. A salty tear splashed on her face and she let out a whimper. His rough finger wiped it away. “You’ll be all right,” he soothed her. “Sure, you will, then.” He took her outside past a honeysuckle bush with its sweet scent. He caught Alvina’s look shifting from the fish flake to him and Nellie.
He gazed out over the water from the walkway along his house on the cliff. “Here we is, then,” he said pointing to a steering. “That old fish bird in the water is a sure sign for a good haul.
” He settled into his chair and pointed to gulls flying low. They were like flashes of silver under a bright sun as they dived letting out a relentless cry. “Look, little one, see the gulls,” he said.
Nellie Rita’s look followed the birds and then her eyelashes dropped like tiny gold threads against her face. The little girl fell asleep, her little chest barely rising.
William laid a finger on her cheek and she stirred. He blinked back a tear. “You and I will soon be goin’ beyond the vale of tears to heaven, we’ve been told. You’ll be up there, for sure. No muddy roads for your little tootsies. You’ll walk on streets of gold. Not even a princess gets that close to so much gold here on earth.”
One November morning Jacob looked through the window and gazed up the hill to George’s house. He felt a stillness about the place. “The clothesline is bare at Vine’s this morning,” he told Elizabeth. “I think I’ll go on up and get the news.”
Elizabeth nodded, her heart racing. “Vine is earlier than most women in having her lines full on a Monday.”
George was opening the gate when Jacob got to the top of Kennedy’s Hill. “The little one’s gone,” he said and then his cheeks puffed to hold in a sob. His large hand brushed across his eyes, moist and heavy-looking. Jacob squeezed his arm and went inside the house.
Alvina looked up from staring at the cold face of her child, her eyelids red.
At the funeral the minister said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Our children are His. We have them for as long as He wills.”
On their way back home George said bitterly, “We’ll get nowhere arguin’ with God. I’ve got me bottle. What do you have?” he asked Alvina.
“I have me hope,” she answered.
George stopped outside their house and said, “If I could believe little Nellie is an angel I wouldn’t grieve as much. It’d be our loss and her gain.”
Alvina rubbed his arm, her voice crusty. “That is as it is. Believe it.”
William heard their heavy steps and rubbed his chest to ease a pain. “I hope to hold Nellie when I gets inside the pearly gates,” he murmured. “For now Sarah Ann is holding her.”
Elizabeth and Jacob followed Alvina and George inside. Elizabeth, feeling the loss of her mother and brother resurface, hoped she would never know the pain of losing a child.
* * * * *
57
“Sometimes I wish I could die a tragic death. Then I would be carried forever in your heart,” Ben said one day as Maggie stood looking through their kitchen window to a wild sea.
Shocked at his words she didn’t reply at first. Then she turned to him and saw the depth of pain and despair in his eyes.
“How many men married to widows of sealers live day after day in the shadows of ghosts! They deserve better,” he said. “I deserve better.”
“I love you, Ben,” she said, startled at the truth of her words. She was beside him, then, bringing pent-up passion to her embrace. His arms hung at his side as if he were too stunned to lift them and wrap her in his embrace. His hesitation made her realize what he had felt all the times he’d wrapped his arms around her and she had not reacted. Now she tried to explain believing it for the first time. “Jamie is one memory, an old memory that surfaces. You’re not a memory. You’re here.”
Then Ben did something unexpected. He took her hand and, without explaining, urged her out the door and along one road and up another. They came to the gate of All Saints graveyard. He unlatched it and led her inside.
“We have what we have and it’s got to be enough,” he said stopping at the Southern Cross memorial where Jamie’s name was carved. “Wish him goodbye,” he said, his voice terse.
Maggie looked at the memorial, really seeing it for the first time. She ran her finger along Jamie’s name and then she dropped to her knees, her head bowed. She tried to say goodbye. When she looked up at the hopeful look in Ben’s eyes she almost did.
He lifted her by the hand saying, “It’s time to let go of someone gone. Today and tomorrow and for as long as God wills the days will be ours, yours and mine. What we have together is enough.”
“It is,” she answered. “Having you is enough.”
On long winter nights when winds blew strong and heavy around the house Maggie would say, “Hold me, Ben!” He’d hold her, his face against hers like a hot water bottle. Her mind reached for Jamie. Already he was drifting from her mind. A wave brought him back, slamming hard, knocking her off balance and then he was gone again. She tried to let him drift away and be at rest.
Cyril, their first child, was born in 1919.
“Yours and mine,” Ben said bending down to kiss Maggie. He took the mite in his strong arms.
Other children followed: Joseph James, Harris, Wilhelmina, Gladys, Laura, Hayward, and Eric, all by 1929. She held the children in her arms and they cuddled against her as if she were the most important person on earth. She watched them run about outside, their clothes in varied colours, each child different from the others. Like a rainbow! She smiled remembering the letter from a stranger, her words about a rainbow of promise.
Now her rain of tears had been wiped away by a rainbow of children.
Maggie lay in bed in the softness of a spring morning and let out a satisfied sigh. For a moment her feet nestled against Ben’s warm feet skin to skin, her lips brushing his back and lingering. The children were asleep. Not a stir.
She slipped out of bed to make breakfast. It would be a busy day, the start of the planting season.
She had made porridge and set a bowl for her and Ben by the time he came into the kitchen, his face thoughtful. She was pouring their tea when he looked at her, his voice steady. “Johnny Porter has outfitted an old skiff he bought. I’ll be off with him to look for fish to salt for the winter and some to sell. I can’t always depend on the land.”
Maggie’s hands tightened into fists, her nails cutting into the skin leaving red scalloping on her palms. She didn’t say anything as Ben got ready to work the land. He knew the land like Jamie had known the sea. Now he was going to know the sea.
For the next while when Ben wasn’t working the ground he was off on the water as a hired hand helping with trawl lines. Summer came with hauls of fish.
Maggie touched his rough hands, rubbed powders into burst blisters and cracks from ropes and salt and trawl hook infections. The land was never as rough. Still she enjoyed the rich haul of food from the sea. Now and then Ben brought home a salmon and smoked it in a fire banked with sawdust and blackberry moss in a sod hut attached to the barn. She savoured its fresh taste, its flesh filling.
One day while she was on the stoop washing clothes she glanced at the sky. Dark clouds were gathering ominously. Suddenly the air came alive with wind. It struck like a birch broom sweeping up beach sand. Smoky winds cast a gloomy presence over the dark headlands. She stopped her fierce scrubbing on the washboard, leaned into her tin tub, and looked toward Johnny Porter’s skiff beating its way in. Her heart lurched. What if one day Ben don’t come home?
Later, after he had come ashore, she glanced out a window at him standing by the wood horse, his head lowered toward it as if he was deep in concentration. She wondered why he was still standing there.
She went to the stove to stir the boiling pot. She looked out again and saw Ben coming up from the Porter fishing stage. Impossible! He was just by the wood horse.
That night she looked at Ben sitting beside her at the table after the children had gone to bed. His jowls had softened and loosened but he was still fine-looking. She picked up his hand lacing hers with his. He slipped toward her and she fell under him, scared that she may have seen his token. She had missed her blood for six months. It was not a time to become a widow. She felt the heaviness of her ninth child.
When Harris was lost in the woods behind their house the next day Maggie thou
ght God was punishing her for holding on to Jamie’s memory. After a long search she and Ben found the little boy curled up against a tree asleep. When she rushed to wake him he yawned and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked up at his father and held out a pine cone. “Mamma told me that big trees grow from pine cones. I tried to open one to find a tiny tree.” Then he looked up at tall trees piercing the sky and murmured, “Trees must get tired standin’ on one leg all the time.”
“It’s their nature,” Maggie told him. “They provide wood so we can make chairs to sit on when we’re tired.”
Harris nodded and Ben swept his arms under him. “Fathers have a place for tired little boys to rest their heads,” he said.
Harris smiled and nestled against his father’s chest.
58
Elizabeth hurried to fill the clothesline. She pegged the last article and then she leaned an arm on the fence. She’d been spoiled at home in Foxtrap. She hadn’t known what work was—the little bit she had to do was nothing compared to this. Here she was with Elsie nine, Mary Jane six, Doris four, little Jamie fifteen months, and getting so big she felt like she had a front porch built on her. She’d been so taken with Jacob she hadn’t thought about what she’d miss by marrying him. She missed the gentle roll of hills and lowlands in Foxtrap—the place where she belonged. She remembered her mother singing, “Simple life is very good. It keeps me oh so free.” She began to sing it and Alvina, on her way down the hill with a solemn look, smiled. She crossed the garden laughing and singing, too. It was a good way to lift a down mood.
Jacob came up the path and leaned against the porch door facing looking amused. “There’s something new under the sun,” he said. “Glady Bishop got herself a bouncin’ baby boy.”
Elizabeth turned startled. “At fifty. Lord, don’t tell me.” Her hand went to her own belly. “I’d better be done before then.”
“A woman’ll have only what she’s meant to have,” Jacob answered, “one or a dozen.”
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