—Enough of what?
—This, he said.—Us.
—You go on, she said.—I’ll be down now the once.
Abel sat alone at the table with Hannah. He knew his father had come by Selina’s House when he arrived that morning though neither of his parents said a word to him about the visit. And they ate now without mentioning the afternoon’s events or the union or Eli. He was nearly finished his meal when he looked up to see his mother crying. He put his fork and knife across the plate.
—She’s twice your age, Hannah said.
—I knows how old she is.
—And you’re in love are you?
—Maybe I am.
—Why let that ruin the rest of your life?
He got up to bring his plate to the pantry and when he came back into the kitchen Hannah had wiped her face dry. She pushed away from the table and stood there holding her plate.—Don’t you go overseas, Abel.
—Why would I do that? he said, startled by the sudden shift.
—Promise me you won’t.
—All right, he said.
She shook her head, fighting back the tears again, as if he’d denied her.
He left the house after supper without telling his mother where he was going. Clear and still over the Tolt and in the moonlight he could see the roof of Laz Devine’s house had foundered, all the windows scavenged from Mary Tryphena’s place. He found his father and Coaker in the house across the garden talking in the flicker of light from a damper left open on the stove. They took Abel’s arrival as a signal to light a lamp and Eli set about making tea, asking after Dr. Newman and Azariah Trim and a handful of others without ever mentioning the women Abel lived with at Selina’s House. They talked then about the war and about Port Union, picking up the conversation Abel had interrupted.
Coaker excused himself to go to bed an hour later and they could hear him settling into bed in Abel’s old room at the back of the house. It was a private sound that embarrassed them both and Eli cleared his throat against the noise.—How’s Esther getting along? he asked.
—She haven’t changed much since the last you saw her.
Eli leaned forward in his chair to stare at his folded hands.—Your mother, he said.—She says you and Esther. She thinks it might be good if you moved out of Selina’s House.
Abel watched the flicker of firelight on the wall above the stove, a lump of hot wax in his throat. Eli asked if he’d considered volunteering for the regiment now he was eighteen and Abel turned his head so quickly that his father held up a hand.—Uncle Will could make arrangements to see you get overseas right away.
Abel stretched his legs, kicking one heel off the toe of the other boot, trying to dislodge the ache at the back of his throat. He motioned toward the ceiling with his head.—Is this his idea?
—He asked what I thought of it.
Abel knocked his heel against his toe a while longer.
—You don’t have to decide anything this minute, Eli told him.
Abel nodded.—Did you ever know Judah Devine? he said.
Eli sat back in his chair.—When I was a youngster. I hardly remember a thing about him.
—Esther says he was born out of the belly of a whale. And stunk like a dead fish.
—Esther, Eli said and sighed.—You know Esther isn’t a well woman, Abel.
—I should get home, he said.
Abel started across the garden and halfway to Mary Tryphena’s he stopped, turning back toward the house. Just the one lamp in the kitchen and he stood a long time in the cold, watching. He saw the lamp lift from the table finally, the brief glow of it at the turn of the stairs on the second floor as his father made his way to bed.
Esther spoke to him out of the darkness of the parlour when he came into Selina’s House.—Where have you been this evening, Abel?
—Over to see father, he said and he paused a moment.—They want me to join up.
—Who does?
—Father, he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say Uncle Will.—And Mr. Coaker.
There was only silence in the parlour’s black. Hannah had scrubbed the floors and washed the curtains and aired out the furniture months ago but Abel could still smell the goat. He thought Esther might have fallen asleep in there. He said, How did Judah Devine find his way into the belly of that whale?
—How should I know?
Abel leaned against the door jamb.—That’s the best you can do, is it?
—Maybe he was a fisherman washed overboard in a storm, she said.—Or a sailor drove mad by being too long at sea.
—That still don’t say how he wound up swallowed by a whale.
—What does it matter, Abel?
She was drunk and he found his impatience welling up again.—You could care less if I join up, he said.—It wouldn’t matter to you if I lived or died.
—Don’t be a sook, Abel.
He walked along the hall and through the kitchen, pulling off his coat as he went. Certain it was all a lie, the life she’d given him, her mouth on his, her hands, the preposterous little history she’d spun to make him feel at home in the world. He felt he’d been made to look a fool.
Eli and Coaker rose early the next morning, both men all business over their breakfast. They discussed the general council at Port Union, the progress of bills in the House of Assembly, what would become of the price of fish when the war ended.—What did Abel say about signing up? Coaker asked finally.
—He’s going to think about it.
Coaker looked up from the bread he was buttering.
—He seemed interested, Eli insisted.
Coaker set his food down and sat with his hands beside the plate. Eli turned to the stove so as not to see the panic Coaker was just managing to tamp down. They had so much to lose now, Port Union, Coaker’s cabinet position in the coalition government, the new fisheries regulations that might save the industry from itself. So much the union had fought for on the verge of realization and Coaker already fearful it might slip away in the bog of the country’s petty politics.—I know it’s a lot to ask, Coaker said.—But he’d never see action, Eli, I promise you that. We can have him assigned a stretcher-bearer, he’ll be safe as houses.
Eli couldn’t help thinking Abel’s volunteering to carry stretchers was a trifle in the grand scheme and he said as much.—It hardly matters one way or the other, does it?
—Everything matters, Coaker said.—Perception is half the game.
They were still eating when Tryphie put his head around the door. They’d both noted him absent the day before though neither had mentioned it. Coaker said, I was starting to think you were trying to keep clear of us, Tryphie.
Eli went to fetch him a mug but Tryphie waved him off. He refused even to take a chair.—I just come by to let you know, he said, if Hannah haven’t already mentioned it. Levi Sellers come around to see us.
—When was this?
—Before Christmas. He was looking for something on Mr. Coaker.
—He only has to read the St. John’s papers if it’s gossip he wants, Coaker said.—Reprobate, abuser of the fairer sex, delinquent father, it’s all in there.
—He was after something a little different than that, Mr. Coaker. Offered me a third of his estate to swear out an affidavit.
—An affidavit stating what exactly?
—Something that would implicate you—Tryphie made a motion with his hand—in acts. Unnatural acts.
Coaker was staring steadily at Tryphie, as if daring him to elaborate.
—He claimed he was acting on behalf of more than just himself, Tryphie said.—I thought you ought to know.
—I have nothing to be ashamed of, Coaker said.
—You’ll want to watch out to yourselves, just the same.
—Levi went to Hannah? Eli asked.
—Right after he spoke to me.
Eli reached for the table edge and looked away out the window, caught sight of Abel coming across the garden at a run. Moments later the boy slam
med through the door.—I wants to join up, he said.—Father says you can get me in, Uncle Will, is that right?
Coaker managed a smile as he stood from his chair. He seemed happy for the distraction.—I might be able to pull some strings, he said.
A series of telegraphs went back and forth between Paradise Deep and several government departments in St. John’s and by mid-afternoon arrangements were all but made. There was a meeting of the local union executive that evening where Coaker announced Abel’s intentions and made a show of him in front of the group. He’d be travelling into St. John’s with them at the end of the week to sign up, Coaker told the assembly, and men lined up to shake Abel’s hand and wish him well.
The news reached Selina’s House before Abel walked the hundred yards back from the F.P.U. Hall. Hannah waiting at the door for him when he came in.—You made a promise to me, Abel Devine.
—I didn’t know Mr. Coaker wanted me to join the regiment.
—And that’s God’s word, is it? What Uncle Will wants, he gets?
—You said yourself you wanted me out of this house.
Hannah grabbed a coat and pushed past him to the door. He watched her march down the path in the moonlight, an unfamiliar hitch in her step as she went, as if she was hobbled by some private grief, and he almost called out to her before he heard Esther moving above him. She was on the landing when he turned toward the stairs.—Hello Cannon Fodder, she said.
—What do you care? Abel said.
She turned away toward her room and he climbed the stairs after her. She had a fire lit and she waved him in to lie beside her. He stared up at the stained ceiling, trying to comprehend what he’d agreed to. It had happened so quickly it felt like an accident now, a fall from a rooftop. Regret funnelling through him at the thought of leaving Esther behind and he shook his head, fighting off tears.—This was all a mistake, he said.
—You don’t have to go, Abel.
—Mr. Coaker is after telling everyone I’m joining up, he said. He moved to get out of bed but Esther pulled him back, lifting herself over him. She rocked slightly side to side and then steadied herself, Abel already hard beneath her.—Come on, she said, grinding into him.
—You’re drunk.
—What do you care? she said.
It felt like a fight coming out of their clothes, as if they were each trying to keep something hidden while stripping the other bare. He turned her on her back and lifted his knee to pry her legs open but Esther wouldn’t have it, twisting away to push her naked ass into him, reaching behind to guide his cock inside when he seemed at a loss. He fell across her after he came and held on until she turned underneath him, reaching up to pat his cheek.—A sin to waste that gear of yours, she said.
—I’m not wasting it.
—Go put some wood on the fire, she said and he stepped across the room, his legs rubbery beneath him. When he climbed back into bed Esther pointed up at the dimly lit ceiling.—There’s France, she said.
—Where?
—Next to England there.
—There’s nothing up there but a water stain.
—You can’t see Italy? she said.—The one that looks like a boot?
—You can make anything out of anything, can’t you.
Esther laughed.—I wouldn’t be back here if that was true, she said.
He leaned up on an elbow to look at her.—What happened to you over there, Esther?
—Nothing, she said and she shook her head.—Everything, she said.
He watched her steadily.
—All right, she said.
She was in London the first time it came over her. Fifteen hundred people in the theatre and she stood in the wings listening to their murmur beyond the stage lights. All week the papers reporting how her voice had faltered in her last three performances on the continent. Her German understudy sleeping with the orchestra’s conductor, the two of them leading a campaign to push the Northern Pearl off the marquee. She hadn’t slept in days.
She walked on stage to polite applause but there was a whiff of blood about her and the audience could almost taste it. She felt like she was singing under water, she said, her own voice muffled in her ears, a sound as syrupy and thick as molasses. And she could sense something unfamiliar approaching in the middle of the first aria, a black tunnel that opened beneath her feet and she fell from the world in mid-note. She was in the wings when she came to herself, the bitch of an understudy already on stage. She could see faces gathered over her but couldn’t move or speak for the longest time.
—Like Lizzie, Abel said.
—Just like Lizzie, yes. Esther rolled over him and out of bed, standing naked at the fireplace. An angry-looking scar on her abdomen.—Happened almost every time I went on stage after that. I spent every cent I had on doctors.
—What did they say?
—A kind of sleeping sickness. They think it travels through families. Not a thing they could do for me.
—I thought you made all that stuff up, he said.—All those stories.
—I can’t help what you think, Abel.
He held a hand out to her.—Come back to bed, he said.
When Hannah left Selina’s House she rushed across to the F.P.U. Hall only to be told Eli was already on his way to the Gut. By the time she caught sight of them the two men were crossing the garden to the house and she ran the last fifty yards to stand between them and the door, her chest heaving.—Mrs. Devine, Coaker said, and she shook her head as if denying the fact. He turned to Eli.—I might take a little stroll before I go in.
Eli stood within arm’s length of his wife, waiting for Coaker to move out of earshot.—Abel volunteered, Hannah, he said.—He won’t be anything but a stretcher-bearer, Mr. Coaker will see to that.
Hannah shook her head again.—You never give a thought to none but yourself, Eli, not once in your life.
Eli turned to stare in the direction Coaker had wandered off.—Tryphie says Levi Sellers come round to see you a while back.
—What does that have to do with Abel?
—I just wanted to say it wouldn’t serve you to have any gossip come out in the papers or in the courts, he said.—It wouldn’t reflect well on yourself or on Abel.
—I could kill you, Eli Devine, I swear to God, she said.
Eli stepped close so she could see every feature of his face in the pale moonlight.—I won’t have anyone belonged to me hurt Mr. Coaker, he said.—I won’t allow it.
Hannah covered her mouth with her hand, shocked to see so clearly something she’d tried to ignore all her life. She pushed past Eli, running back across the garden, and he stood watching as she went. Coaker ambled over to him once she was gone and they stood side by side in the dark.—Should we go in? he asked.
Abel left for St. John’s en route to overseas at the end of the week, the wharf and shoreline crowded with well-wishers despite the cold. Union banners on the stagehead, Adelina and Flossie Sellers presenting him with woollen socks and a scarf from the Women’s Patriotic Association, Reverend Violet offering a blessing before the boat departed.
Abel stayed at the rail of the F.P. Union long after his father and Coaker went below, watching the coastline slip by. Snow creviced in the headland of the Tolt, the nearly invisible entrance to the Gut snaking through the cliffs. Devil’s Cove where the quarry cut for the cathedral’s stones showed black through the drifts. Miles further on to Spread Eagle and Smooth Cove and the cold didn’t touch him the whole way. Esther hadn’t been on the wharf to see him off and he tried to tell himself he wanted no different. But by the time they sailed over the Rump his legs were watery and shaking and it was all he could do to keep from bawling. He wiped at his eyes and found the ridiculous socks from the Women’s Patriotic Association still in his hand, bent down to shove them into his kit bag. Discovered Jabez Trim’s Bible tucked away inside, tied up in its leather case. Only Esther could have stowed it there, he knew, to say something she was too goddamn precious or traumatized to speak, and in a fit of
childishness he pitched the book over the rail. It floated alongside the boat awhile and Abel ran the length of the deck to keep it in sight, shouting at the water. He could just resist the urge to go over the rail after the book as it churned in the wake and sank below the surface.
Tryphie was surprised that Hannah stayed on with Esther after Abel left, though he guessed it was preferable to the company she might be forced to keep if she moved back to the Gut. He stopped by Selina’s House every few days to see the women had enough wood in and to ask after his daughter. There was no word from Abel and they expected nothing for weeks if not months. Hannah had to make do with speculation in the St. John’s newspapers and rumours passed on by Tryphie, or by Dr. Newman when he visited on Sunday afternoons.
At the beginning of April Tryphie came to Selina’s House with news that Eli was back from St. John’s.
—When did he get in?
Tryphie slapped at some invisible lint on his pant leg.—I saw him coming off the boat yesterday morning and he wouldn’t so much as look at me, Hannah. He’s holed up over in the Gut now. Haven’t even been by the union hall.
—Did he hear something about Abel?
—I don’t know what’s wrong. I was thinking you might want to go look in on him.
Hannah shook her head.—I can’t be the one to do that, she said.
Tryphie looked up at the ceiling and nodded.
He could see snow still drifted up the side of the house as he crossed the garden, a footpath kicked through to the front bridge. He leaned in and called, closing the door behind him when he got no answer. The fire had guttered to ashes and he stoked it up against the chill in the air.—I’m making meself a cup of tea, he shouted. He reached for the kettle where it sat on a small table beside the stove and startled at the sight of Coaker’s portrait above it, as if it were someone flesh and blood in the room with him.—Jesus loves the little children, Tryphie whispered. It occurred to him that Eli could be lying dead up there and he forced himself to climb the stairs. Found him on the bed in Abel’s room.
—Hello Ladybug.
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