Galore

by Michael Crummey

  An over-capacity crowd assembled at the hall, people standing four and five deep outside the windows for a glimpse. No one had yet laid eyes on Esther. She’d been holed up three days at the new hospital with a flu, they were told, though some claimed she’d never arrived, that she was delayed in London or St. John’s or had changed her mind and cancelled. It wasn’t until Adelina Sellers took a seat at the upright piano below the stage that their doubts left them. A rustle passed through the room as she adjusted the piano stool and the pages of her music. When the curtains opened the audience was faced with the sight of a young Mary Tryphena Devine in a gown of georgette and seeded pearls, her hair black as a crow’s wing, curled and tied up in a style they’d never seen.

  Abel Devine was having difficulty thinking of the creature on the stage as his blood, though he’d been told as much. She was wearing tight strings of pearls at her neck and wrists, the delicate line of the collarbone bare below the clasp. Applause drowned out the first lines of the song completely and when the noise finally settled the hair rose on the back of Abel’s neck. The voice seemed too extravagant to come from the figure on stage and he looked behind periodically, thinking it was some sort of elaborate ventriloquism. The audience roared whenever Esther drifted into those impossible ranges and no one heard her falter the first time, though Abel saw her flinch as if she’d been stung under the bell of her skirt. Something in her face turned inward before the smile reasserted itself. Adelina Sellers glanced up at the stage and Esther waved her on impatiently. A hush fell in the hall as the Nightingale’s voice rose and broke like glass. The flesh of Esther’s neck flushed red and she asked for water and carried on a little while before she collapsed on the stage.

  It was all anyone spoke of for days afterward, the shock of Esther’s otherworldly voice failing her and the indecent outfit she wore before the entire community and the secrecy that surrounded her arrival. She’d been locked in a room at the new hospital before the performance to keep her away from liquor, people said, she’d fallen down drunk on the stage. The union had paid for her travel from Europe and she’d been booked to perform in half a dozen other F.P.U. districts, but Coaker cancelled the tour after her collapse. Everyone expected she would sneak off the shore the way she’d arrived. But two weeks later Esther Newman took up residence in the shambles of Selina’s House.

  The old hospital had the feel of a place evacuated during an emergency. The air smelled of formaldehyde and disinfectant and chloroform and rot. The margins of each room cluttered with the detritus of thirty years of frontier medicine, outdated equipment, empty glass bottles and stacks of paper, the shards of ten thousand teeth trapped along the baseboards. Esther made a bed for herself in the main room upstairs where an insistent leak had stained a medieval map on the ceiling, the misshapen outline of the continents drawn where Mr. Gallery had once come through the plaster in his ghostly boots.

  She never appeared outside the house but she was drunk, the black extravagance of her hair in fits, her childlike face puffy and discoloured. She was supplied her liquor by Des Toucher or someone of the like and no one doubted how she paid for it. When she went out she wore as much of her wardrobe as she could layer, one outfit on top of another, ball gowns and skirts and blouses and sweaters and elegant robes, a tangle of jewellery about her neck. She bought a goat from Val Woundy and kept it in the parlour, taking it for walks on a leash or harnessing it to a wooden truckley and riding through the streets. Bride once or twice contrived to bring her granddaughter to church on Sunday mornings and they walked arm in arm to their pew, the younger woman unsteady on her feet, her eyes licked out and her head chiming like a steeple bell.

  Hardly a soul darkened her door through the winter though her antics occupied everyone’s idle time. They felt their good will had been abused and a merciless accounting was underway. There was talk that her storied career in Europe was a sham, that she performed only in dance halls and burlesque and worse. She had taken to drink in the aftermath of an adulterous affair or an abortion or some other European scandal and only their respect for the doctor saved her from open ridicule. They’d surrendered her gift to the wider world without complaint or envy and they couldn’t forgive her coming home a fallen woman.

  Early in the new year, Bride came to the Gut to speak with Eli and Hannah. Esther had left the hospital for Selina’s House to be clear of Newman’s meddling, Bride said. She’d been living in a home for indigent women in London much of the previous year and there was nothing to go back to in Europe. She asked Eli to write a letter to Tryphie.

  Eli wanted no part of it, embarrased still to have talked Coaker into paying Esther’s way home from Europe.—Perhaps you should be the one to do that, he said.

  —I don’t have the heart to tell him myself, Eli.

  —Maybe Dr. Newman, Eli said and Bride shook her head. Her husband was useless in the face of any affliction that couldn’t be stitched or splinted or removed with a scalpel. He refused to talk about his granddaughter except to rail and curse and throw whatever came to hand against the wall.—Tryphie will take it better coming from you, Bride said.—Tell him We’ll send her down to Hartford in the spring.

  —If she don’t burn the house down lighting a lamp in the meantime, Hannah said.

  Eli nodded.—She shouldn’t be left alone over there.

  —She won’t hear of coming back to the hospital with us, Bride said.

  Abel was on the green chesterfield, pretending to read while the conversation went on. He’d seen Esther Newman riding through the streets of Paradise Deep with an alder whip in her hand, caught glimpses of her behind the windows of Selina’s House, standing in that unnatural stage posture and singing drunkenly to her goat. He’d snuck to the back of the house once, inching the door open to listen. Nursery rhymes mostly, children’s songs and nonsense syllables when the words failed her. He could smell the stink of the goat stabled down the hall. The only thing Esther managed all the way through was a ballad he’d never heard before, a woeful profession of love for a dark-haired girl that was so tortured and graceful it made him wish he hadn’t stood there to listen. There was a long pause when she finished and he could hear his own breath in the quiet.—Who’s there? she shouted and Abel battered the hell out of it, running up to Tryphie’s workshop to hide behind the rusting remains of the Sculpin while Esther cursed from the doorway.

  He hadn’t worked up the courage to go near the place since, though some bit of Esther Newman was what he woke to and what he carried to bed at night. The thought of her filled him with panic and dread and childish awe. He could feel the people at the table staring and he glanced up from his book.

  —We could move Patrick Devine’s library back into your room over there, Eli said.

  —Just until we can make arrangements, Bride told him.—In the spring.

  He could feel the vein in his neck jumping as the blood roared through. He was nearly fifteen and still sharing a bedroom with his mother.—I don’t mind, he said.

  Eli walked him over the Tolt three days later and they knocked at the door, letting themselves in when they got no answer. The goat wandered out of the parlour to greet them.—Who’s the youngster? Esther asked from the top of the stairs.

  —He’s mine, Eli said.

  Esther came down two steps and leaned against the wall.—I didn’t think you had it in you, Eli.

  He nudged Abel.—Go and put the kettle on, he said.

  They sat together in the kitchen, Abel staring at his knees while the conversation between his father and the drunken woman juddered and jackknifed along. Much of their talk made no sense to him. Esther wept occasionally though Abel was at a loss to pinpoint the cause.—You love the music so much, she said, wiping away snot with her sleeve.—You love it and you think it must love you back somehow, she said.

  Eli nodded.

  —But the music could care less if you live or die, Esther said. She laughed at herself suddenly.—You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, d
o you.

  —I know exactly what you’re saying, Eli told her.

  Esther never looked at Abel or spoke a word to him while he sat there, and it wasn’t clear if she ever took in the arrangement his father proposed.—Who’s there? she shouted every time Abel came through the back door of Selina’s House. The same puzzled belligerence in her voice, as if she’d forgotten he was living in the old servant’s quarters.—It’s Abel, he called back and that was as close as they came to conversation. Esther ignored him, wandering the hallways drunk and talking to the goat in languages he didn’t understand and singing her forlorn nursery rhymes. He felt as if he was eavesdropping at the back door still. He was given no specific instructions other than to make sure the house didn’t burn down and he walked through the rooms at night to douse the lamps she’d left lit.

  Each morning he emptied her honey bucket and made her bed and folded away the trunk of clothing she’d worn on her most recent jaunt through town. He cooked his own meals and left food in her way hoping she would at least pick at something. She took to leaving the goat in its harness after her drives and Abel put the truckley away in Tryphie’s workshed, happy to be acknowledged as her kedger. She slept at all hours of the day and he made sure there was a pillow under her head and covered her with a quilt and he often stood looking at her awhile then, free to try taking her in without embarrassment. There was a simple prettiness in the face that the years of drink hadn’t quite ruined, a veneer of refinement about her even in her cups, and he couldn’t help but think of her as beautiful. He pulled the quilt higher around her neck to feel her hair brush against his fingers.

  Esther could sleep for hours and he was at loose ends without her activity to occupy him. He pretended to read, half listening for the sound of her up and about again. He copied endlessly from Jabez Trim’s Bible, he chopped firewood and hauled water and cleaned ash from the fireplace and the kitchen stove. He snooped through the rooms of the old hospital, picking through the clutter and junk, puzzling over the arcane surgical equipment or browsing through stacks of medical notes. Esther woke hungover and miserable and Abel boiled the kettle for tea, folding her hands about the mug to be sure she wouldn’t drop it.

  Hannah came by with meals on occasion, to satisfy herself Abel wasn’t starving to death. Once a week Bride visited the house to ask after Esther.—She isn’t causing you too much trouble?

  —I don’t mind, he told her.

  —I could come for a night sometime to spell you off.

  —We’re fine, he said.

  He resented these incursions into what he thought of as his territory. There had been no further word of shipping Esther off to Connecticut and by March month Abel had forgotten his station was intended to be temporary.

  At the beginning of May, Esther’s father came to Selina’s House unannounced. Tryphie arrived with Eli and they knocked for fear of what they might barge into if they did not.—Hello Abel, Tryphie said when the boy peered out.

  Abel slammed the door shut in the men’s faces and stood behind it, the floor pitching beneath him.

  —Open the jesus door, Eli shouted.

  The goat looked out from the parlour, chewing placidly on a tuft of ancient case notes. Esther came to the top of the stairs and stared down at him where he barred the entrance. She was wearing a stage dress of black chiffon, backlit by sunlight through a window.

  —You’ve the loveliest hair, he told her. He was struggling not to bawl, his pale face gone awry with the effort.

  —You let them in now, Esther said. It was the first full sentence she’d ever blessed him with.—Tell them I’ll be down the once.

  Abel waited in the parlour with the imperturbable goat while Esther sat with the men in the kitchen. Eli appeared at the door finally, looking in at his son among the filth of the room. The youngster unable to hold his father’s eye, his life hanging in the balance.—She says she won’t leave with him, Eli said.

  He only nodded at the news.

  —Get that animal out of the house, Abel.

  And he nodded again.

  Tryphie stayed on in Paradise Deep a month, trying to cajole his daughter into coming to live with him in Hartford. He spent part of every day in the company of the Honourable Member, sitting in an office on the second floor of the F.P.U. Hall, staring out the window at Selina’s House as Eli blathered on about the union. Twenty thousand men—a tenth of the country’s population—had taken the pledge, fourteen union candidates elected to the House of Assembly in the last election. A monthly union newsletter to counter the fabrications in the merchant-run papers. Eli had a cot in a room behind the office and spent most of his nights there. Trade agents across Europe to sell their fish, Eli told him, an F.P.U. office in Greece. Levi Sellers reduced to pandering to the Catholics just to keep afloat.—We can’t get enough warehouse space in St. John’s to supply the operation, he said.—Mr. Coaker is looking for a place closer to the northeast coast. We’re going to build every inch of this from the ground up somewhere, warehouses, drying rooms, cooperage, a shipyard. An electric generating station.

  —I think I’ll wander on, Tryphie said without looking away from the window.

  —Elevators, Eli said, to shift the fish from the drying rooms to the warehouses at ground level. Things that have never been built before, things that haven’t hardly been thought of.

  —Is she going to drink herself to death over there? Tryphie asked.

  Eli leaned back in his chair.—Abel will watch out to her, he said.

  Tryphie glanced across at Eli, a portrait of Coaker on the wall above his head, the president’s face appearing to float in the glare of light through the window. Tryphie considered it a fact that he hated Eli Devine and had done so for a long time. He looked back out at Selina’s House.—You think there might be some work for me in all of that? he said.

  —Down in Hartford, you mean?

  —I figure it might be better if we came home out of it.

  —I wouldn’t have thought Minnie would want to set foot back here.

  Tryphie stood from his chair to stop himself telling Eli to fuck off.—She’ll want to be next her daughter where she can keep an eye on her. If you could set me up with some work.

  Eli shifted forward to put both elbows on the desk.—I’ll see what I can do, he said.

  Tryphie left for the States in late June and all the talk that summer was about war in Europe, the flotsam of rumour and half-facts washing up on the beaches. Eli was away at Government House in St. John’s all summer. Britain declared itself in August and Newfoundland carried along in its wake. Five hundred volunteers enlisted with the Newfoundland Regiment for service overseas. Coaker offered to resign to join up himself, only relenting when union locals flooded him with telegrams and letters urging him to stay on as president. The war inflated the price of fish and men were mad after the cod all season.

  In October Tryphie and Minnie came home to Paradise Deep. Abel was afraid they’d move into Selina’s House at first but Minnie wasn’t prepared to live in close quarters with her daughter’s misery and they settled into John Blade’s old place instead. Tryphie went to work in the union office as an accountant though he spent most of his time blueprinting Coaker’s elaborate fantasies, pulleys, gears and winches, electric motors, turbines, power lines.

  Adelina and Flossie Sellers chaired the Women’s Patriotic Association, hosting knitting bees to send scarves and socks to the troops overseas. Joshua Trim was among the first union volunteers to make it into action, and news he’d been killed reached the shore shortly before Christmas, the blinds down at the Trims’ household all through the season.

  Esther railed against the war with a drunken exuberance and Abel settled himself a pacifist out of allegiance to her. She seemed to have no argument with the conflict but that it was happening in Europe. As if the war was an escalation of the continent’s appetite for sacrifice and waste. She greeted the young men on the streets with calls of Hello Cannon Fodder and they nodded warily.
Watching after the woman and the pale youngster in her wake. Abel had grown to almost six foot and towered over his alcoholic charge, the pair like a carnival marriage on display, their strangeness a twinned thing.

  After her first full sentence to him, Esther seemed incapable of shutting herself up. She talked endlessly of which roles she’d sung in what productions in which storied theatre, each opera’s intrigue and backstabbing and doomed affairs mirrored in the dressing rooms and backstage halls and hotel rooms of the performers. The mad directors and absinthe-addled librettists, the aging Lotharios who lost their nature and the nose off their face to venereal disease, the pedophilic impresarios who bankrolled the productions. Esther was always drunk when she reminisced, breaking into scraps of arias or humming the orchestra lines, and there was no clear narrative to the diatribe. Abel had trouble keeping the details of one theatre or composer or horny, social-climbing tenor separate from all the others.

  —Do you know what I am? she asked one afternoon and there was a belligerence to the question that made him wary of answering.—I, she said, striking a stagey pose meant to mock herself, am a mezzo-soprano.

  The words meant nothing to him but he knew enough to let her carry on.

  —Supporting roles, she said, that’s what a mezzo gets. Servants. Mothers-in-law. I didn’t go all the way to Europe for a life in the shadows.

  She found a vocal instructor willing to stretch her range, an aging Swiss with an addiction to opium and few scruples, and she had to sleep with him before he consented to the undertaking. Esther mimicked his fussy accent.—You must sleep nine hours a night and drink only water, no coffee or tea, no alcohol, you must keep your throat covered at all times, you must never engage in Sapphic love.